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9 


U^XLE ZEKE 



Studies in Hearts 


BY / 

JULIA MAC NAIR WRIGHT 

I \ 





AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 
150 NASSAU STREET 
NEW YORK 



\ 


THF LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 
Two Cc>P)£8 Receded 

AUG. 13 1902 

'i COPVRIGHT ENTHV 

X S’- IC\ O'L 
dLASS XXo. No. 

5 1. i M 

COPY 8. ’ 


Copyright, 1902 , 

By American Tract Society. 


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CONTENTS 


Two of God’s Hidden Ones 5 

Those Kirkaldies 33 

A Modem St. Christopher 47 

A Pair of I^ne Women 61 

“Hips, Haws, and a Bit o’ Green” 76 

The Case of Carola 91 

Two Mother Hearts 105 

The Man with a Dried- Apple Soul 114 

The -'Window Lady 122 

The Servant of Sin 127 

“Fiddlin’ Jim” 133 

“Uncle Geordie” 142 

“Me ’n Friller” 150 

In English Alms-Houses 163 

A Mother’s Lesson 177 

Uncle Zeke 181 



Studies in Hearts 


TWO OF 

GOD’S HIDDEN ONES 

you are going to Philadelphia, and are 
sufficiently pious and impecunious, of course 
you will board with Misses Mary and Louisa.” 

This was said in a little village railway sta- 
tion. We were going to Philadelphia, and we 
boarded with Mary and Louisa. The house 
was on Market Street, the lower floor being 
a great hardware store; between this and an 
adjacent furniture shop was a narrow staircase 
leading to the living rooms, also a narrow hall 
running back to the dining-room and kitchen. 
Evidently, saving hard work and fatigue had 
not been a prominent consideration when this 
tenement was secured. In fact, whether or not 
they could pay the cost was the first factor dealt 
with by Mary and Louisa in their business 
problems. They had been born in the beautiful 
county of Berks, of a family always few in 


6 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


number and famous for godliness and a re- 
markable longevity. Eighty was the youngest 
life limit noted on the scanty pages of the rec- 
ord in their family Bible. Their father had 
been impoverished by “becoming surety for a 
friend.” When the parents died, these two wo- 
men, past middle age, had gathered their 
ancient furniture and small resources and come 
to this home on Market Street “to take board- 
ers — ministers and elders mostly; they liked 
to have good people about them.” 

Mary, the elder by two years, had always 
been small and very plain : she was much wrin- 
kled ; a few wisps of gray hair adorned a rather 
large head, a light of kindly, universal sympa- 
thy shone steadily in her folded gray eyes, and 
always, no matter how hard the day and how 
heavy its burdens, the sheen of a peace that 
passeth understanding rested on Miss Mary’s 
face. Mary did all the chamber work, waited 
on table, and attended to all the ironing ; heavy 
work for a woman nearing seventy. She had 
grown somewhat stout, and no doubt felt the 
weariness of the many stairs she climbed. 

Miss Louisa was of a different type : tall and 
erect, she had been rather handsome in her 


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TIVO OF GOD'S HIDDEN ONES. 7 

youth ; her thin hair retained some of its brown- 
ness, and was arranged in a little knot atop of 
her head, and two quaint flat curls wound over 
a small shell comb on each side her head — a 
fashion copied, perhaps, from some long-dead 
ancestors or some antique engraving, which 
well became her. Miss Louisa did the market- 
ing, the cooking, table-setting, dealt with the 
boarders, received and laid out all the money, 
and was a trifle more decided and self-assertive 
than Miss Mary. Some one has to be em- 
phatic in a house full of boarders. Their near- 
est relative, their father’s sister, had lived in 
the city, and had urged her nieces to come 
thither. She had seemed fond of them, was 
childless, and her husband, a merchant and an 
alderman, had arrived at the great honor of 
having a street named for him, and putting 
thirty thousand dollars to his credit in the bank. 
When he died, the aunt had come to live with 
Mary and Louisa, promising solemnly to be- 
queath to them the thirty thousand dollars on 
condition that they cared for her till her death 
and allowed no stranger to nurse her. She lan- 
guished for five years with cancer, and died two 
years before T met Mary and Louisa. 


8 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


One of Louisa's many charities had been tol- 
erating a boarder who was a whole year behind 
with the board of himself and wife. She said 
they were good people and would eventually 
pay the bill. They were seeing hard times, and 
she did not wish to increase their troubles. 
Kind, ill-requited Louisa! She did get that 
board money — but what did she lose? Edu- 
cated and plausible, the man felt that his 
fortune lay in launching a book illus- 
trated with portraits and filled with biog- 
raphies of ^‘The Benefactors of the State." 
In this volume Mr. and Mrs. Brown would 
shine resplendent if the fatuous old invalid left 
her fortune to the production of the large vol- 
ume. “Immortalizing her name" — that was 
what caught poor Mrs. Brown’s fancy as she 
lay and listened to the tempter, while Mary and 
Louisa worked themselves sick below stairs. 
To-day such a will would be broken as easily 
as a Sevres cup. I think Mary and Louisa 
made no effort to break the will. They were 
old, poor, timid, and especially afraid of law- 
suits. Their old age loomed before them, beg- 
gared. 

We had the back parlor. Between that and 


TWO OF GOD’S HIDDEN ONES. 


9 


the front room was a door, and over it hung an 
old-fashioned green moreen curtain. 

The sisters were with me one day, when Lou- 
isa was called to the front room. She let fall 
the curtain, but did not close the door as she 
passed to the parlor. 

“I have come,'' said the guest, “to ask for 
your aunt’s picture, to be enlarged as the front- 
ispiece of our great work. We have looked in 
vain for a portrait of her. You must have 
one.” 

“Your people know,” said Miss Louisa, 
“that we were badly treated about the money. 
For years it had been solemnly promised to us. 
We are old and worn out, and that was our sole 
dependence for our old age. Advantage was 
taken of an infirm, aged woman to persuade her 
to break her word. If the use of the money for 
our lives had been left to us, we should not have 
begrudged the principal going in any way aunt 
chose at our death. We have no picture for 
you.” 

“Will you not reconsider that refusal, and, as 
we have the money, give us the portrait of our 
benefactress ?” 

“No,” said Louisa, emphatically. 


10 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


The next day Mary came to me with a little 
flat packet. 

“Will you mail it for me when you go out?’' 

“Certainly.” 

“I don’t like to do things without Louisa, or 
against her ideas,” said Mary, “yet, after all, 
they may as well have aunt’s picture if they 
want it. She would have liked it. She was 
a proud kind of person that way, and has no 
children to remember her. I feel just as Louisa 
does — that we have been wronged. It was cruel 
and ungrateful, for if we had not let that man 
board here for months when he could not pay, 
he would not have been here to influence our 
aunt. We do fear being paupers in our old 
age ; but God knows the way we take and what 
is good for us, and He will lead us through. 
He never does his children harm, you know. 
It will look right when we get to heaven. If I 
can only work as long as I live, I shall make no 
complaints.” 

“Did you get nothing at all from the es- 
tate?” 

“Elder Glenn and our minister, and one of 
our church friends who is a lawyer, spoke to 
the people who got the money about our case. 


TWO OF GOD'S HIDDEN ONES. 


II 


and all they would do was to say they needed 
the money, but would give us a hundred and 
fifty dollars to keep still ! Aunt had been here 
without paying board for five years, and we 
had had to get her many things that she would 
not pay for, besides hiring more help, as there 
was so much nursing. Our friends had us 
bring in a bill for expenses, and something was 
allowed. You see, he got her to transfer most 
of the money while she lived. He drove her 
crazy about fame and honor. She was old.” 

‘‘How much did you get beyond your real 
outlay ?” 

“About sixty dollars.” 

“Sixty dollars for five years’ hard nursing! 
Who did the nursing, dear Miss Mary?” 

“I did. I am not as skilled in* housekeeping 
as Louisa. She does not like nursing. I am 
used to it. I nursed my father and mother. 
Don’t feel that we begrudged aunt. We are 
glad that we made her comfortable. She was 
our father’s sister. She was a Christian wo- 
man : we shall live with her in heaven ; we must 
not cherish hard feelings. And” — with a 
quick regard for her sister — “Louisa does not 
— only Louisa — well — felt it more than I did. 


12 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


She is some younger, and may look to living 
longer to need the money. And Louisa was 
very ill last year ; in bed three months ; cold, the 
doctor said, but I knew it was disappointment 
and discouragement. Of course, she feels it 
more.” 

Having thus vindicated Louisa, Miss Mary 
went about her work with a little contented 
hum, as of a bee among flowers, the song of a 
resting heart. 

Thirty years, when I first knew them, they 
had been “keeping boarders” in this house. 
Sorfie of their boarders had been with them for 
nearly that length of time. There was Uncle 
John Glenn, bank cashier and church elder. 
Good Uncle John, whom to know in the beauty 
of his daily living was an education in Chris- 
tianity — stout, smiling, sympathetic. All day 
at his desk in the bank, or in his big chair in his 
room; never absent from a service at his 
church, helpful thinker, liberal hand : 

“Full many a poor man’s blessing went 
With thee, beneath that low green tent, 

Whose curtain never outward swings.” 

Mistress Glenn was a fit mate for her hus- 


TWO OF GOD^S HIDDEN ONES. 


13 


band, a dignified little woman, always clad in 
flowered silk, her time occupied in church 
work. We all considered this pair an ornament 
and credit to 919. They were as a sixteen- 
quartered escutcheon on a family coach. 

There was James Foot, brought to Miss 
Louisa as a fifteen-year-old country orphan. 
She and Mary had mothered him. 

James and Charley Ray had our back attic 
room for twelve years,’' said Miss Louisa. 
“They were full of pranks, as boys will be, but 
we never grumbled at the pranks. We wanted 
the home to be a home to them. Yes, it was a 
work to keep them from the wiles of the city 
and the company of bad people; but we held 
on to them and managed to keep them in the 
church and Sunday-school. James never was 
as religiously minded as Charley; he has not 
come out on the Lord’s side yet. And Charley 
is an elder this three years, and high up in busi- 
ness. Charley never forgets us. He visits us 
on our birthdays and Christmas, and brings us 
presents and calls us aunts. But no wonder 
Charley is so good. Uncle John Glenn has 
done everything a father could for him. And 
so he has for James.” 


14 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


‘‘Charley'^ had gone to a home of his own. 
James had married a milliner, and he, his wife 
and son, occupied a small front room. The 
hearts of Mary and Louisa hovered over these 
young men as a bird over its nestlings. Poor 
old gray women, burdened with many sorrows ! 
They lived to walk with James down the Valley 
of Death, and hear his words of new-born faith 
and trembling hope. I saw them both, with 
bitter weeping, bowing over the manly form of 
Charley, cut down in his prime by a street acci- 
dent, as if it had been by a bolt from heaven. 

There was old Mrs. Cox, nearly blind and 
extremely captious, who lived with them for 
twenty-five years, promising, as their aunt had. 
a bequest; but in dying blood-kin reasserted 
itself, and she left all to the nephews who had 
ignored her. However, one of them made out 
for Miss Louisa a check for extra expenses. 

There were casuals — mostly ministers or 
theological students; the house was a kind of 
headquarters for these. Vacant city pulpits 
sent to Miss Louisa for supplies as one sends 
to a clerical bureau. Not a boarder, but a part 
of the household, was a colored servant, very 
old, whose mother had served Lady Washing- 


TWO OF GOD'S HIDDEN ONES. 15 

ton when the President lived in Philadelphia — 
old Ann, shriveled and bowed together. I 
always thought of the woman in the Gospel, 
‘‘whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen 
years,” when I looked at Ann. She was bent 
over from her hips, so that her face was fixed 
toward the floor, and “she could in nowise lift 
herself up.” She was all the servant the sisters 
kept. She washed, scrubbed, and “did up” the 
dishes. Now and then she helped wait on table. 
It was rather distressing to have cups of tea 
and dishes of gravy thrust under one’s elbows 
on a level with one’s lap. 

“No one else would hire Ann,” explained 
Miss Louisa, “and she would break her heart 
if we left her to go to the poorhouse. She is 
a good Christian. Oh, it is wonderful what 
religious knowledge she has !” 

They kept her while month by month Ann’s 
decaying strength left them more of her work 
to do. They did this for God, and Ann un- 
complainingly took what God assigned her, un- 
til one day she drew a deep breath, bent her 
head a little lower over her washing tub, and so 
died. One minute over the tub of suds in the 
little back shed, Ann so aching and so bent; 


i6 STUDIES IN HEARTS. 

the next, she had heard the new name and 
walked erect in the gardens of Paradise. ‘‘’Tis 
a rare change, my masters !’' 

Life for Mary and Louisa was a routine, the 
most unvarying, rut-running of any life I 
ever noted. The same hours, the same meals. 
For breakfast always a fried mackerel at one 
end of the table, a veal cutlet with brown gravy 
at the other, and sundry dishes of potatoes and 
corncakes between. For dinner, dessert, al- 
ways cranberry pie and bread pudding, and in 
the center of the table a dish of lettuce with 
rounds of hard-boiled egg sliced thereon. That 
dish lent distinction to Miss Louisa’s table; it 
and the salad fork and spoon were a gift from 
the boarders. I never saw Louisa so incensed 
as she was by a burly boarder who made a prac- 
tice of stretching out a long arm furnished with 
his own fork and picking off premature- 
ly the rounds of egg, sometimes when eggs 
were dear, taking them all. Poor Louisa ! when 
she considered that the vandal was in 
debt for his board and was teacher in a ‘‘school 
for young gentlemen,” it did seem hard — as 
hard as the eggs themselves ! She was obliged 
to spoil the symmetry of her table by removing 


TWO OF GOD’S HIDDEN ONES. 17 

the salad to the end of the table by Mrs. Cox, 
who was too blind to see the eggs. 

All day the treadmill of work, varied now 
and then by a call from the clergyman, or the 
church people, or by Louisa Mill. Louisa Mill 
was the namesake of Miss Louisa, whose friend 
her mother had been. Louisa Mill was a strug- 
gling widow, trying to raise four children on 
nothing. In the days when Misses Mary and 
Louisa had cherished expectations of the thirty 
thousand dollars, they had promised to provide 
for Louisa Mill. It hurt them sorely that they 
could now do no more than give her an occa- 
sional loaf, or some boarder’s ‘‘cast-offs” to 
make over. 

Miss Louisa never would give out a latch- 
key, and valiantly sat up until the last boarder 
was in. Late boarders were a great cross to 
her, she was so sleepy. When Mary’s old gray 
head bobbed and plunged violently from side 
to side, Louisa inexorably sent her to bed. 
Mary always obeyed Louisa. Then, left alone. 
Miss Louisa read the daily paper, the church 
paper, the Bible and some favorite Commen- 
tary, and firmly awaited the tardy boarders. 
She told me that sometimes when she dragged 


i8 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


herself upstairs at last she found Mary asleep 
on her knees by the bedside, oblivious of her 
coming. Well — ‘‘So He giveth his beloved 
sleep.” That hour of receiving tardy boarders 
was the hour for Miss Louisa to call in delayed 
payments, and remind of ancient debts. Never 
was landlady so forbearing, so merciful 
as Miss Louisa. I have known her to keep 
a whole large family for months without a pay- 
ment, let them leave in her debt to seek better 
fortunes, and ask no interest when they paid 
arrears. I have known her to remain unpaid 
for three years where misfortunes had crowded 
her debtor. 

“I would not like to be pressed by a creditor 
myself,” said this woman, who, at least as 
much as any other whom I ever saw, lived by 
the Golden Rule. 

“Tell me. Miss Louisa, do you not lose by 
your mercy?” 

“I never have,” said Miss Louisa. “I feel 
sure that I shall some time be paid, and I al- 
ways am.” 

One weekly treat Miss Louisa invariably al- 
lowed herself. Mary never indulged in any. 
What was Louisa’s ? Every Saturday evening. 


TWO OP GOD'S HIDDEN ONES. 


10 


when the day's work was done, Miss Louisa 
took five cents, crossed the street to a confec- 
tioner’s and bought a nickel’s worth of marsh- 
mallow drops. This horn of plenty she emp- 
tied into a little blue china box, a keepsake, and 
placed it at her elbow as she mended or read. 
Miss Mary took one confection with reserve; 
sometimes, being pressed, she took another; 
never more. If any of us appeared on the scene, 
the dear gentlewoman offered us her treat; but 
somehow we all of us were disinclined to 
marshmallows. 

Boarders came in late Saturday night. 
Mary went to bed, Louisa read. Her library 
was small, but sufficient. She read in rotation 
the lives of Martyn and Brainerd, Bunyan’s 
‘'Grace Abounding,” and a much worn copy of 
the “Olney Village Hymns.” 

Miss Mary and Miss Louisa took turns in 
going to Sabbath services morning and even- 
ing. In the afternoon Mary had a nap, a chap- 
ter or so in the Bible, and did her week’s read- 
ing. Her taste was catholic in sermons : Spur- 
geon, Calvin, Doctor Martin Luther, Bishop 
Heber, and John Wesley all fed her hungry 
soul. 


20 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Sometimes when my small boy slept and I 
was otherwise alone, I went down for a little in 
the evening to see Mary and Louisa. At such 
times they had one theme, their early home 
in Berks County. The heat, noise, dust, 
scrimping, little sleep, toiling of the city, 
pressed upon them in these long, hard years, 
and turning backward eyes, they told me of 
the apple trees that tossed their boughs of 
bloom against that bedroom window in the 
eaves; of pigeons fluttering home with a coo- 
ing note ; of bees homing honey-laden ; of cool 
shadows on the grass; of roses wet with dew; 
of going to bed while yet the twilight lingered 
in the west. Dear souls ! for them in beautiful 
Berks the apple trees were always a-bloom and 
roses were always freshly dipped in dew ! 

In my going and coming to and from Phila- 
delphia during a series of years, I always saw 
Mary and Louisa, always a little older, more 
worn and shabby and gray. Then they had a 
year’s notice that the house was to be torn down 
and rebuilt for stores. They resolved to fulfill 
a long, long dream ; they would return to Berks 
County for a year of rest. Some cousins, often 


TWO OF GOD’S HIDDEN ONES. 


21 


entertained by them, invited them. They would 
go and taste again the joys of rest, quiet, all the 
sleep they needed — the glory of lost youth. 
Dear, aged children ! they did not know that 
there are more than “the dead nations’’ that 
“never rise again.” 

They stored their furniture with friends and 
went their way. I saw them when they re- 
turned. Disappointment brooded in the patient 
sorrow on their faces. “They had found it all 
so different,” Louisa said. “The quiet kept 
them awake! They could not sleep for still- 
ness, where only crickets chirped and no street 
cars crashed! They went to bed early and 
could not sleep until midnight. Country roads 
hurt their old feet; they could not get along 
with nothing to do. They were looking for 
another home and to get some of the old board- 
ers back.” They called on me one day while 
on their home quest. I knew they were walk- 
ing to exhaustion to save car fare. They had 
not time to wait for dinner. They went their 
way brave, patient, weary. As I saw them dis- 
appear around a corner, my tardy sense came to 
me, and my heart smote me bitterly. If they 


22 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


had no hour to wait for dinner, I might have 
comforted them with tea and toast. O mea 
culpa, mea culpa! 

At last they found a place cheap enough, and 
set up their faded, worn, scanty belongings. 
Charley, the good, was long dead. Uncle John 
Glenn had died during that year of their ab- 
sence. James Foot had been dead three years, 
but his widow, the milliner, and her son re- 
turned, so did widow Glenn ; a few others gath- 
ered about them. It was a last valiant struggle 
for the bread of independence. A year and a 
little more passed. One evening Mary ironed, 
with many pauses of fatigue, until twelve 
o’clock. She slept so heavily next morning 
that Louisa did not wake her when she rose to 
get breakfast. While the others were taking 
the meager meal, dear Mary 

“Passed through glory’s morning gate, 

And walked in Paradise.” 

Here was Louisa, eighty-three — and alone! 
The life-long habit of having Mary with her 
had fallen from her like a cloak — but then, God 
had been very good to Mary. I was not living 
in Philadelphia then, but that error about the 
tea haunted me often, like a nightmare. 


TWO OF Goiys HIDDEN ONES. 23 

Several years later I had gone to Philadel- 
phia to visit an old friend. Setting out to walk 
alone to church one morning, my mind fixed 
resistlessly on Mary and Louisa, and looking 
up, I ^aw near me the milliner. We stopped. 

“What about Louisa?’’ I demanded. 

“Well! I’m glad if some one remembers 
her ! How long have you been in the city ?” 

“Since yesterday.” She was mollified. 

“Louisa is living with Mrs. Mills. Louisa 
has not a penny, and Louisa Mills is as poor as 
poverty. Many of the old friends are dead or 
moved away. Louisa is forgotten. I know 
she is suffering for little comforts. I have all 
I can do to help my son, who has a sick wife 
and three little children.” 

Then followed the hasty tale: Louisa had 
tried to keep house for a little over a year after 
Mary’s death, but found the affair impossible. 
Her hand had lost its cunning. She could no 
longer make the wonderful cranberry pies or 
the marvelous brown gravy ; she forgot her ac- 
counts, and the rings of egg no longer adorned 
the salad. She furnished a room for herself 
with Louisa Mills, and sold the rest of her 
goods. The small sum that remained to her. 


24 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


just a few tens, had now all gone, and poor 
Louisa Mills, supported by the meager wages 
of her children, could give Aunt Louisa little 
but kindness. 

That forgotten cup of tea and its lacking 
toast rose up before me. ‘T neglected you once, 
excellent Louisa, but on this brilliant Sabbath 
day you should not be forgotten ! Should not 
this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath 
bound, be loosed from the fangs of want on this 
Sabbath day?” The pealing bells in the bel- 
fries saw me flying from the church toward 
that humble quarter where the child of fair 
Berks was lingering out her last paralyzed 
years. 

Louisa Mills herself met me at the door, and 
incontinently broke into weeping. We went 
into the beggarly little dining-room, where her 
two boarders, “young men in the attic,” had 
just finished a late breakfast of fried pork and 
potatoes. Amid many sobs Louisa Mills told 
her story. “She hasn’t had a cent this two 
years, and we are so poor I can’t half do for 
her. I give her my best room. I would not do 
less for her, but it keeps me from letting it. 
Sometimes she wanders a little in mind, and I 


TWO OF GOUS HIDDEN ONES. 25 

know she wonders why she is not better done 
by. She is paralyzed from her hips, and yet I 
have to leave her alone while I do my house- 
work, for I have no help. She is so bad off ! She 
used to be dressed in decent clothes and so neat, 
but now she has only two gowns, and both 
worn; only two pair of old stockings, not a 
wrapper or a pair of slippers — oh, the things 
she is without! And she is heavy for me to 
move; it nearly kills me to try it! Oh, what 
can we do ! What can we do !’' 

For a few seconds I regarded the poor, beg- 
gared, weary little woman, and then responded 
wrathfully, out of an indignation born of think- 
ing what neglectful idiots we who called our- 
selves Louisa’s friends had been. 

“Why, I’ll tell you what you can do. Wipe 
your face and cheer up, and go tell Louisa 
that I am here and coming up to see her. This 
afternoon you will receive food, clothes, all the 
little luxuries Louisa needs. To-morrow the 
church people will begin to come to see her, and 
after this every week you will have paid you a 
fair price for all Louisa’s care and proper ex- 
penses. You will have money to keep a strong 
girl to help with the lifting and to do work for 


26 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


you, so that you can stay with Louisa. We 
don’t mean her to die alone. Why didn^t you 
tell her church people ?” 

“I didn’t know I should. I belong to an- 
other church, you know. Louisa never said 
anything of it. The minister came a few times ; 
but men don’t notice the signs of things; and 
we are here, off on the other side the city. Bed- 
ding, Louisa has enough, except a white 
spread ; her’s is all ragged.” 

She went up the narrow stairs, and I soon 
followed her. Louisa welcomed me with joy. 
‘Tt was so good of me to come. So kind to re- 
member her!” She never reviled me once for 
my long carelessness, never complained of any 
of us — asked after all, and said ‘‘she loved us so 
much !” She had no cap, such as her aged face 
and bald head needed. A faded, thin, old black 
shawl was about her shoulders, and I noted that 
she tried to cover with it the torn sleeves of her 
gown. On a table near was the blue china box, 
long empty. 

“I’m a great burden on poor Louisa Mills,” 
she sighed. 

“You are not a burden on any one, nor will 
you be,” I returned. “The early Christians had 


TIVO OF GOjyS HIDDEN ONES. 27 

all things in common. You have a right to 
share the good of your fellow church members. 
You have been a succorer of many. You have 
hindered us all of a privilege by concealing 
from us how we could help you. It is our 
right to show our love to Christ by ministering 
to you. Freely you have given, dear Louisa; 
now freely receive. You would have thought 
it strange not to share your all with your sister 
Mary. You are our sister.’’ 

^‘Oh, how I miss Mary !” said Louisa. “I miss 
her so on Sundays! We spoke to each other 
of the sermons, and at night the boarders came 
in early and we got to bed early. Before we 
went I read a Psalm and some of ‘Pilgrim’s 
Progress’ out to Mary. We read it all, Chris- 
tiana and the children and all, and when we 
finished it we turned about and began over 
again.” 

“It was a Sabbath day,” I said, “when a sud- 
den post came to Mary that she was wanted 
at the court of her King. That morning, I 
think, the river was all in a great calm.” 

Louisa looked at me, “and the water stood in 
her eyes.” 

“After this, Louisa, we shall all see after 


28 


THE WAY OF A MAID. 


countrymen, it had grown rusty through disuse. 
Michael Halloran was awkward and ashamed 
before the girl, and got away as soon as he 
could, vowing to have the marriage as soon as 
ever things could be fixed up. 

He was as good as his word, but quick as he 
was someone else was quicker. Within a few 
days of the marriage Mary and John Hurley 
made a runaway match of it, and in the hulla- 
baloo that followed it may be doubted that 
Michael Halloran and Mary’s parents had any- 
body’s sympathy but their own. 

Michael Halloran retired to his solitudes after 
that, and it was some years before he made 
another matrimonial attempt. He was close on 
sixty then, and looked as if he were rough- 
hewn out of gray granite. His second venture 
was more successful. Poor little Mary Carew had 
not the spirit to save herself from this gray 
bridegroom, or perhaps the brave lover to help 
her through with it. Her match was made for 
her with as sordid a spirit as if she were a young 
heifer or a mountain lamb. She went through 
it quickly, but it killed her. She lived for a 
year after her marriage, a gray little ghost of 
her gay and innocent former self. Then Nora 


KINDLY NEIGHBOURS. 


29 


was born, and her mother died, being too lan- 
guid, it seemed, to have the desire to live even 
for the sake of the little wailing baby. 

Michael Halloran had never forgiven Hugh all 
these years that old slight put upon him, so it was 
a bitter pill when he was offered Jim Hurley for 
a son-in-law. However, he, who was'as adamant 
to the rest of the world, was like wax in his 
daughter’s little hands, and he swallowed the dis- 
tasteful thing with scarcely a grimace. He was 
disappointed in more ways than one, for he held 
John Hurley’s son no match for his little girl. 
He wanted something more tangible than a 
college education and a reputed cleverness. It 
was part of the peasant primitiveness which be- 
longed to him that he thought contemptuously 
of these things. 

However, Nora had her way in this as in every- 
thing, and so it came to pass that she was to be 
daughter one day to gentle Mrs. Hurley, who be- 
gan to yearn over her son’s promised wife, very 
human as she was, the farther away her own 
young brides of Christ seemed from ordinary 
human needs and desires. 

It was surprising how busy those young per- 
sons were, how full the long day from their peni- 


30 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


nel skirts came upon the scene, and the box was 
full. Thomas went off, like Issachar, stooping 
between two burdens. 

‘T want you,” I said to my friend, ‘^to write 
a note to Mrs. Buell about this case. She is the 
leader of work in that church where Louisa is 
a member. She is the one to go to see Louisa, 
and to get the proper maintenance for her and 
see that it is regularly paid. You set the mat- 
ter before her, for I do not know her well 
enough to hint to her that this is not a case for 
certain little methods of patronage and dicta- 
tion, to which she is unconsciously given.” 

My friend laughed, and wrote for some while 
after dinner, while we others planned for more 
vigorous and sympathetic looking after of ‘‘the 
poor among us.” 

About the middle of the week, in company 
with a box of marshmallows, I went to see I.ou- 
isa. Louisa Mills, in a state of renovation, met 
me at the door. 

“Well, the change of it! Now she is com- 
fortable. Come in. Yes, they came — a dozen 
of them by degrees, and so cordial. Mrs. Buell 
sent a down quilt, as lighter for her poor bones ; 
then comforts, and the prettiest counterpane! 


TWO OF GOD’S HIDDEN ONES. 


31 


With them a box for me, with three new gray 
wrappers, six white aprons and a pair of slip- 
pers, and a note saying that ‘such a kind, good 
nurse should have some nurse’s clothes.’ Folks 
say Mrs. Buell is pretty lofty and high and 
mighty, but it isn’t so. She is the kindest, 
sweetest lady that can be.” 

I wondered what Mrs. Buell had found in 
my friend’s Sabbath letter. Evidently, plenty 
of Gospel. 

I went up to see Louisa. So neat and com- 
forted as she looked — the pretty garments, 
fresh cushions for her great chair, dainty covers 
for bureau and tables, a big bunch of carnations 
brought by the minister, who had read to her 
from the “Olney Hymns” and “Grace Abound- 
ing.” 

“I did not know,” said Miss Louisa, with a 
sigh of content, “that so many remembered me 
or cared for me. Probably it was my own fault 
for hiding away.” 

I thought it was as much the fault of us oth- 
ers who did not keep our aged poor looked up. 
However, the manes of that teacup were par- 
tially appeased. 

Louisa lived nearly two years after that. 


32 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Her ninety-third year had struck and found her 
calm, hopeful, well cared for, interested in what 
interested others. 

Then when the sweet clangor of the Sabbath 
bells sounded across the city they called her to 
enter that Upper Temple whence she has no 
more gone out. 


Those Kirkaldies 



• ^ 



A 



THOSE KIRKALDIES 


We came upon the Kirkaldies when we were 
in London, looking for lodgings ‘‘up Islington 
way/’ There was the usual “furnished apart- 
ment and attendance” in the first floor window. 
On the door of the house to the left was the an- 
nouncement “American Dentistry”; the house 
at the right was decorated by the sign of a phy- 
sician ; below, on the corner, an attorney-at-law 
comm.ended himself to attention ; there were no 
shops in sight, and evidently the neighborhood 
was “eminently respectable.” A maid, in reg- 
ulation white cap, apron and list slippers, an- 
swered our knock, and showed us to the spick 
and span closed-up dining-room floor, which 
had all the newly polished appearance of the 
apartment waiting for lodgers. After a digni- 
fied and due delay, she came in, the landlady, 
middle-aged, plump, kindly, very Scotch and 
sonsie, like her name ; our Scotch blood warmed 
to her. There was a premature grayness on her 
hair, her mouth had a little pathetic droop, and 
her eyes held a patient resignation. 


34 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Behold the woman with a history! ^‘Miss 
Kirkaldie?'' we queried. 

‘‘Miss Mysie Kirkaldie/’ she corrected. “I 
keep the house. These are the rooms and she 
opened the folding door to the bedroom. All 
was spotlessly neat, in good repair, but old 
enough to be very gray, if furniture could get 
gray with years. Some bits of bronze, silver 
and fine china hinted of the “better days” that 
stand in the past of all lodging-house keepers. 
There were the examples of old-fashioned cro- 
chetted lace and crewel work, and the basket of 
wax fruits, which told of maidens reared in 
“genteel boarding-schools,” and at home accus- 
tomed to sitting in the family parlor by the 
mother and using their needles as proper Scotch 
lassies should. Yes, it was a nice apartment, 
but the drawing-room floor is always the best 
in the house, and we asked for that. “The 
drawing-room floor is always kept entirely for 
Miss Kirkaldie,” said Miss Mysie, with a little 
accent of reproof, as if one had suggested some 
invasion of those penetralia where dwelt in dim 
stillness the household lares and penates. 

We took the apartment on her own terms, 
and then Miss Mysie encouraged us by the in- 


THOSE KIRKALDIES. 


35 


formation that there were three sisters of them, 
Miss Kirkaldie, Miss Ann Kirkaldie and her- 
self, Miss Mysie; they lived alone, except that 
they had the young maid whom they had 
brought up, and they took lodgers in the dining- 
room apartment. They were Scotch, from 
Glasgow, said Miss Mysie, daughters of a Kirk 
minister, and had been in London for sixteen 
years. 

We took possession, and found that we were 
in a realm of great cleanliness and quietude, 
scrupulous adherence to business engagements 
and comfortable routine. Every day the order 
was the same; at half-past six in the morning 
soft gliding of list slippers past our door an- 
nounced Miss Mysie and Mattie, the maid, on 
their way to the basement kitchen to prepare 
breakfast. Later, ponderous steps, making 
every effort to be inaudible, indicated Miss Ann 
Kirkaldie in the room over our heads dressing, 
and presently she came downstairs with cau- 
tion, to‘share the meal in the kitchen. This was 
our signal for rising, and by the time we were 
ready Mattie had the next room dusted, the fire 
lit, the table laid. While we ate, the family 
made a procession to the drawing-room floor. 


36 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


and then the sound of a monotonous, quite mas- 
culine voice gave us to know that Miss Kirk- 
aldie was acting as the family chaplain, her 
reading and prayer broken by four voices 
quavering in one of the Psalms of Rouse’s 
Version. More heavy steps above, and Mattie, 
fleet-footed, carrying up a tray with tea, toast 
and eggs for the family potentate’s invariable 
morning portion. We plead guilty to watch- 
ing behind the red brocade curtains to see Miss 
Ann presently set forth. Arm of foot, square of 
jaw, steadfast of eyes, clad in black, a large, 
well-filled blue flannel bag on her arm, a Bible 
in her left hand, and in her right an umbrella, 
opened or closed according to the weather. Al- 
ways the same to minute, dress, gait, went Miss 
Ann, except on Sundays, when she left the 
house at two in the afternoon, without the bag, 
and with an intensely solemn expression; for 
then, as Mattie told us. Miss Ann went to stand 
by those appointed unto death. 

As days elapsed into weeks and nothing 
amiss was discovered in us as lodgers, we 
gained a certain intimacy with the family, at 
least with Miss Mysie and Mattie. Mattie in- 
formed us that Miss Kirkaldie and Miss Ann 


THOSE KIRKALDIES. 


37 


were engaged in ‘The Work/' Thus she indi- 
cated one of the noblest, best-managed and least 
assuming forms of Christian labor, the Nurse 
and Bible Woman Mission to the poor women 
and children of London. No wonder that Mat- 
tie said “The Work” ; it had nursed her dying 
mother, and shown her the gate of heaven; it 
had rescued her and her infant brothers and sis- 
ters and set them in Christian homes ; it repre- 
sented to her the Gospel in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

“Miss Kirkaldie,” said Mattie, with the deep 
reverence one might use in speaking of royalty, 
“is a lady superintendent. She was Bible wo- 
man for one year, just to get acquainted 
with the people; then she was district super- 
visor, then lady superintendent. She has 
fifteen nurses and Bible women and supervisors 
under her; Miss Ann is the chief of them. 
They meet in Miss Kirkaldie’s parlor every 
Saturday night. You may have heard them?” 
We admitted having heard them, but not to any 
annoying degree. Duly at seven each Satur- 
day evening we had heard the steps of tired 
feet going up the stair ; Miss Kirkaldie’s heavy 
voice in prayer and reading, “the wailing 


38 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


strains of sweet Dundee,” then the murmur of 
speech as the affairs of the mission were dis- 
cussed. “I take them up tea, toast and jam at 
nine,” said Mattie, “and they leave at ten. Miss 
Kirkaldie is a grand superintendent, so good 
that they kept her on, four years ago, when she 
got so she could not leave her floor. She gets 
a salary. Some of the lady superintendents 
are rich and give their services, but when one 
is fine, like Miss Kirkaldie, but has to earn a 
living, then she gets a salary. Miss Ann, of 
course, gets a salary; all the supervisors, and 
nurses, and Bible women do; they are women 
who have to support themselves. Miss Kirk- 
aldie and Miss Ann lay by money each year. 
It is to use if they get where they cannot do 
any more work, and to leave Miss Mysie, who 
has no way of making a living. Some day 
Miss Kirkaldie will go to the home above, and 
Miss Ann will take her place ; when Miss Ann 
is called away, there will be only Miss Mysie 
and me. I shall never leave her. I shall wait 
on her always, and she will never see me want. 
She took me when I was only four years old. 
We shall keep together always.” Thus Mattie 
prognosticated her simple future. 


THOSE KIRKALDIES, 


39 


Sometimes Miss Mysie brought her knitting 
and came to sit for an hour with me, and do the 
talking. ‘‘We came here sixteen years ago,’' 
she said. “After father died some of his friends 
urged my sisters to come here and enter the 
Work, while I kept house. It is doing good, 
and it makes our living.” Then, in very confi- 
dential hours, came glimpses of her particular 
history. Miss Mysie had had expectations — 
of marriage, of a home of her own, of being 
sheltered, loved, cared for. She was not a pro- 
gressive woman, this Miss Mysie, but thor- 
oughly domestic. There had been in Glasgow 
a sailor, mate of a ship that sailed to the Orient. 
As soon as he had been made captain, the home 
was to be furnished for him and Mysie; it was 
“before father died.” So the sailor went off 
through the wide Clyde lapses, on that final 
voyage before the home. The captaincy fell 
to him on the voyage, and then over his fate 
came darkness and silence. He went out with 
his men on some business in the captain’s gig. 
It was in the pirate-full China seas, and neither 
officer, men, nor gig were seen again. No mes- 
sages came; Miss Mysie hoped on, hopelessly. 
When the early home was broken up and the 


40 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


change made to London, she came to do 
her share, leaving her new address with her 
father’s successor, for him, if he came. As the 
little story trailed off her tremulous lips, Miss 
Mysie looked out of the window. I think that 
often and often she had looked into the depths 
of the London fog and seen it as the thick mys- 
tery of those China seas, as if she would draw 
out of it to her that boat propelled by lusty 
arms, the captain seated in the bow, while to 
the music of its oars the captain’s gig drew 
down the years, its little flag fluttering to sig- 
nal her, ^‘Be of good courage, Mysie, for love 
is here.” Those watchings had given her blue 
eyes their pathos. I gathered that the elder sis- 
ters felt as if their junior had rather tempted 
Providence and over-passed maidenly discre- 
tion by contemplating entering the intricacies 
and dangers of married life. Still, in a meas- 
ure they grieved for her sorrow, and labored 
to provide for her future. They considered 
that by her nature she was entirely a ‘‘home 
body,” and they gave her the house and Mattie. 

Miss Ann had also had her romance, of a 
very different fashion, the deep romance of a 
daughter’s intense love for a father who was 


THOSE KIRKALDIES. 


41 


her ideal. Mysie told me: “Miss Kirkaldie 
was always in the parish work after we grew 
up. She taught the Woman’s Bible Class, su- 
perintended the parish school, the Mother’s 
Meeting, the Sewing School, the Infant Sun- 
day School, the Women’s Prayer Meeting, the 
Missionary Society, and taught the young 
men’s class Sunday afternoons. She was busy 
morning, noon and evening, and was our 
father’s helper. Father lived to be over eighty; 
he preached to the last. After he was seventy 
he lost his sight. Then Ann read to him, did 
all his writing at his dictation, waited on him, 
and led him from house to house in all his par- 
ish visitation. It was in this life my sisters 
were so well prepared for what they are doing 
now. I was my mother’s helper. I looked 
after the house, to make it comfortable for all. 
Mother was busy in the congregation; all the 
ladies expected to be called on, and visited, and 
taken tea with ; if there were sickness or death, 
mother must be there, and there were the new 
babies to be seen. I often went to see the new 
babies myself; I love children.” Miss Mysie 
gave a little sigh and looked out of the window, 
but her eyes were introspective. She thought 


42 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


of days when she had had visions of little 
chubby night-gowned creatures, flaxen heads 
bowed low against mother’s knees at bed-time 
prayer. God had made his different choice for 
Miss Mysie. “Who led thee through that great 
and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery 
serpents and scorpions, and drought, where 
there was no water, who brought thee forth 
water out of the rock of flint ; who fed thee in 
the wilderness with manna which thy fathers 
knew not” 

Said Miss Mysie, “Little children have 
helped me to learn many lessons. There is my 
verse, The beloved of the Lord shall dwell 
safely by him, and be quiet from fear of evil.’ 
I have seen little children timid of everybody, 
crowding close to their parents, feeling safer 
the closer they were, and quiet from all fear 
of evil, as they looked out of that safe dwelling. 
I think of that, and I am not afraid of the years 
when I may be poor, alone, and old, for if I 
have God I shall be rich in him and never 
alone, and his children’s hearts are always 
young.” Dear Miss Mysie ! 

The London Bible Work Society I had 
known of from my childhood. It was born in 


THOSE KIRKALDIESu 


43 


the church of Dr. James Hamilton, Mothers 
in Israel who listened to that saintly preacher 
had planned and fostered the mission, and ex- 
tended it through England and to the Conti- 
nent. Living in a household that moved 
entirely in the circles of ‘The Work,*' I was 
naturally more drawn to it I heard from Mat- 
tie of the aged one into whose feeble care had 
come three helpless little grandchildren ; of the 
bread-winner who had fallen dead from his 
brick-layer's scaffold; of the woman and six 
children, abandoned of a recreant husband and 
father. The desertion appealed to Mattie as 
a direct blessing of heaven ; it was her opinion 
that the only virtuous act possible to a bad man 
was to nm away and relieve a suffering family 
of his presence. I heard of the dutiful girl, 
sole support of an old father, and now 
crippled by an accident, unable even to provide 
herself with the needed wooden leg. One even- 
ing I went to my little box of dedicated money, 
and, taking from it several bright, yellow disks, 
bade Mattie hand them to Miss Kirkaldie “for 
The Work.” 

This unexpected largess produced great ex- 
citement Mattie presently dashed to the base- 


44 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


ment to summon Miss Mysie. Miss Ann, re- 
turning with her blue bag, was met on the 
stairs. There was an evening family council 
in the ‘‘drawing-room,” to which all, including 
Mattie, were called. Next day Mattie told me 
“the money would do great good; there were 
pitiful cases ‘up Islington way,’ which the just 
portion of society money for that locality could 
not cover.” 

Miss Ann called upon me in the evening. 
She did not, like Mattie, discuss the future. She 
was not retrospective, as Miss Mysie. That 
deep romance of her life, when she had walked 
with her father in steadfast company, was too 
sacred for speech. She spoke of “The Work.” 
Miss Ann thought that, increased an hundred 
fold, that work would be inadequate to the 
great city’s bitter need. She found that wick- 
edness, idleness and selfish greed lay behind 
most of the suffering. There were scores of 
wicked poor waiting to snatch the help that 
should go to the honestly needing, the inno- 
cently suffering. In spite of the unworthy, 
there were many of God’s hidden ones, his little 
children, to succor, for whom he would say, 
“Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, 


THOSE KIRKALDIBS. 


45 


, . . . unto me.” Yet, Miss Ann loved the 
work; it was worth living for; it took hold 
upon eternity. 

Miss Mysie stated that Miss Kirkaldie would 
like me to call upon her, and at gas-lighting I 
was personally conducted to the drawing-room. 
Miss Kirkaldie sat near a bright sea-coal fire ; if 
Miss Mysie was stout. Miss Ann large, Miss 
Kirkaldie was prodigious. A great frame in- 
clining to fleshiness had, during years of en- 
forced confinement, been enormously built 
upon. She was fifty-five, with gray eyes and 
iron-gray hair; her whole personnel suited the 
resonant tones of her voice. Her rooms were 
furnished with the heavy mahogany, the thick 
carpets and draperies, which had belonged to 
the best room of the Glasgow manse ; the huge 
leathern chair, the high ottoman that held her 
nearly useless feet, had been given to her father 
by his parishioners. Her father’s mighty con- 
stitution, which had carried him through fifty- 
seven years of arduous pastoral work, was, in 
his daughter, vigorously doing battle with gout 
and locomotor ‘‘ataxy.” I speedily found that 
the imprisoned lady superintendent knew every 


46 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


item of the work under her as perfectly as if 
she had been daily in the field. 

Shortly I rose to bid her good-bye. No two 
women could offer a greater contrast; we had 
been born a hemisphere apart, but that was 
nothing to physical and subjective distances be- 
tween us — only two points of contact, the Scot- 
tish blood that cried out in the veins of both, 
and our fellowship with our common Lord. 
Miss Kirkaldie saw it, too ; there was little that 
escaped her. She held my hand in a lingering 
clasp — and her resonant voice rolled like a 
wave along the room : “They shall come from 
the East and from the West, from the North 
and from the South, and sit down with Abra- 
ham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God.*’ 


A Modern 
St. Christopher 






\ 


i 

I 

* 

t 

•i 


iM 


I 

1 

li 


1 



A MODERN 
ST. CHRISTOPHER 


To lose fortune when all the world seems to 
be going prosperously— this is hard. To lose 
home when home is dear — this is hard. To 
lose friends when the heart is warm and friend- 
ly — this is hard. To lose reputation — this is 
passing hard. But to lose faith, to find the 
soul suddenly stripped of its trust, its hopes, to 
find the present orphaned of God's fatherhood, 
the future desolated of the eternal life — this is 
a loss harder than all. 

‘^We sit unowned upon our burial sod, 

And know not whence we come, nor whose we be, 

Comfortless mourners for the Mount of God, 

The rocks of Calvary.” 

There was a man, Harvey Ogden by name, 
who had experienced all these losses, even to 
that culminating loss of all. That last came sud- 
denly upon him one lowering November day, 
when a dull mist driven by raw winds was 
rolling in from the sea over the sodden land; 


48 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


the sun had forgotten the world, and heaven 
had forgotten him. 

He stood in a dreary landscape where wet 
poplars filed along the muddy roads, where the 
harvests had all been gathered, and the small 
houses, scattered here and there, proclaimed the 
poverty of the soil. 

Could this landscape ever have been sun- 
kissed and beautiful ? He straightened himself 
from tightening his saddle-girth and looked 
abroad. Had he ever found this lovely the 
year around? Yes; but then he was young, 
and heart and life had been full of benediction. 
Now, here, where he was born, his heart had 
died within him; his heart, his soul, had per- 
ished. Heart? Soul? Had he, in any high 
sense, ever possessed either ? Had not his heart 
been simply a contracting and expanding mus- 
cle? His soul, was it not mere animal breath; 
his own status, was it not merely a little higher, 
but less stolidly enduring, than that of this 
dripping ox patiently chewing its cud in a cor- 
ner of a rail fence ? 

All his losses had come upon him as the work 
of one man, who out of jealous envy had falsely 
accused him of evil, had driven him from a 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 49 

good position, from home, from happiness. 
How he had hated his adversary ! How he had 
impotently longed to wreak vengeance upon 
him ! But, at last, in the land of the stranger, 
years had brought him friends, honor, wealth, 
and, finally, he had heard the wooing of the 
voice of the Nazarene, ‘‘Arise and follow me,” 
and he had answered, “My Lord, and my 
God!” 

He had made it the test of his new life, of his 
faith and hope, that he could forgive his enemy. 
He found that his heart had grown calm and 
forbearing at thought of him: he no longer 
craved to tear him in pieces, to wreak upon him 
tenfold the measure which he had received. 

When he realized this change in himself he 
believed the new life well begun and he rejoiced 
in the Lord greatly. The old Adam was dead. 
Christ reigned. He walked in fellowship with 
the Supreme. How happy he was for a while ! 
Then he began to have doubts of himself. Was 
the change really so great as he had believed? 
Was he not self-deceived ? He would put him- 
self to a crucial test. He would go back to the 
place where he had suffered. He would face 
the enemy who had triumphed. He would feel 


50 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


the blessed calms of self-conquest, and know 
that he was forgiven of God by this sign, and 
that he himself had forgiven his enemy. In the 
golden Indian summer he began the pilgrimage 
which was to prove to him his acceptance with 
God. 

As he moved toward the scenes of his early 
days, a cold change came upon him. The path, 
once traced in pain and burning rage, brought 
back, as retraced, burning rage and pain. The 
summer died from out the landscape, the win- 
ter of the world and the winter of doubt had 
come; his life had the nakedness of Arctic 
snow-fields. 

Finally he left the railroad and on horseback 
traveled slowly toward the old home. Then the 
tempest of passion broke upon him, surged over 
him, wrecked his soul, and cast him, beaten, 
baffled, and bereft upon the cold shores of doubt 
— and from doubt he reached despair. 

Hate and revenge were rampant still. Then, 
evidently, he had deceived himself and was 
himself unforgiven. All that peace, that holy 
rapture, then ? Myth, sentiment, lost imagina- 
tions, lingering superstitions of childhood. 
‘‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 51 

Lord/’ Had he repaid? No. Then the prom- 
ise and the Promiser were alike figments of 
some fair fancy. Perfect love, forgiveness of 
enemies, doing good to persecutors, praying 
for those who hate : no, no, it was all impossi- 
ble, all a dream ; there was no such new life of 
the Crucified within him. 

He drove his spurs into his lagging horse; 
he now desired but one thing, to reach the 
bank whence, to hide his own sin, Andrew 
Mitchell had driven him, and there to smite the 
lie and the life out of Andrew Mitchell, the 
smug cashier. 

Had he a knife? Surely he had. On! he 
would use it with all his strength. What a 
craven he had been to let vengeance sleep so 
long! Now all was lost to him but that one 
last wild joy. God and the future life were 
lost, and the present life had in it no good to 
be counted beside revenge. Oh, then, on ! 

He almost stumbled over a woman running 
crying up the road from a little wagon-camp 
standing beside a smouldering fire at a turn of 
the roadway. 

“Stop, sir. I hope you be a doctor, for here’s 
a man as is dyin’.” 


52 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


‘^No; I am not a doctor. What has hap- 
pened ?” 

“Something has burst in his breast, and he 
bleeds awful. Stop, sir, will you? Whether 
you know doctorin’ or not, sir, stop, for I’m 
alone except for the bit children, an’ my man 
a poor cripple. This stranger will die on our 
hands, an’ we’re that hopeless poor !” 

Harvey Ogden dismounted and bent low to 
enter the miserable little tent. On a pile of rag- 
ged bedding lay a man, emaciated, shaggy of 
hair and beard, in a swoon possibly. Near to 
death he looked, while the red stream was yet 
dripping over his lips. 

“Dying of hemorrhage of the lungs.” Har- 
vey Ogden gave the verdict with the assurance 
of a medical practitioner. 

“Oh, sir,” pleaded the woman, “can’t he be 
got away from here? Yon is all the bed we 
have, an’ this is all the shelter for five, an’ he is 
nothing to us. We were just giving him an’ 
his child” — she pointed to a little creature 
asleep near the sick man — “a lift for fifty cents 
to the town below, an’ here we had to stop, 
along of the way he was took.” 

Unbeliever in everything and full of uni- 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 


53 


versal hate as Harvey Ogden had recently be- 
come, he could not let this fellow-creature lie 
in so terrible a strait. He ran down the road 
to a small house. A tidy woman in widow’s 
dress opened the door. Ogden hastily ex- 
plained the situation. 

“If you will let me have a room and a bed, 
I will pay for it, and will send for a doctor, and 
will stay by the poor creature until, in a day or 
two, we can move him. Here — there’s earnest. 
Will you get a place ready?” 

The woman hesitatingly took the five dollars. 
“ ’Tisn’t Christian to let a man die yonder in 
the rain,” she said, looking down the road. 

Ogden hastened back, folded a quilt into a 
stretcher, laid the man on it, covered him, and, 
seeing that the tramp-woman was strong, bade 
her carry the pallet at the feet while he bore 
the head. The crippled man followed, bringing 
the child. 

“Where did you pick him up ? Do you know 
his name?” 

“Not a thing about him,” protested the wo- 
man ; “he had no luggage but a little packet of 
food for the child. We took him up ten miles 
east of this.” 


54 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


For a while Ogden, the widow and her son 
were busy checking the flow of blood and mak- 
ing the patient easy in a clean bed and clean 
clothes. Then the son went for a doctor, and 
the widow washed and curled the child, dressed 
him in some improvised garments, fed him, 
and rocked him to sleep, singing to him a 
hymn. 

♦ 4 * ♦ 

‘‘There’s no hope,” said the doctor. “He 
won’t last six hours.” 

The apparently unconscious man had heard. 
He opened his eyes slowly, and said: “Take 
my boy to my aunt, Jane Thurlow.” 

Then Harvey Ogden knew him, knew him 
by his eyes. His enemy, Andrew Mitchell! 
And with the light of recognition rushing into 
his face, Andrew Mitchell knew him also. 

“You!” he gasped. 

“Yes, I am here. Andrew, listen! You are 
dying. Say the truth before these two wit- 
nesses. It was not I that took the bank’s funds. 
Speak !” 

Then, with one great effort, Andrew Mitchell 
raised himself on his elbow, stretched out a 
long, bony finger, and spoke : 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 


55 


“Curse you, Harvey Ogden! I never had 
an hour of luck since I saw the last of you! 
Everybody dogged me about you. Clear you 
now ? No, I won’t clear you ! Curse you !” 

As he fell back the red blood swelled once 
more past his lips — and ceased — and he was 
dead. 

“I’ll make out a burial certificate,” said the 
doctor, who was new to these parts, and to 
whom this scene told but little. 

“Who was he?” asked the widow, looking 
askance at the corpse. “What did he say about 
the child?” 

“He said to take him to Miss Jane Thurlow. 
The man’s name was Andrew Mitchell.” The 
name burned Harvey Ogden’s lips like fire. He 
realized that he hated his relentless enemy 
dead more than he had hated him while he was 
yet alive. 

“Andrew Mitchell, was he?” said the widow 
curiously. “Used to be a bank cashier here- 
abouts, long ago — ten years ago — defaulted, 
and ran off. Going to his aunt, Jane Thurlow, 
was he? He wouldn’t have found her. Died 
two years ago, and left all her money to a 
church home. You’ll help me out of this, won’t 


56 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


you? You brought him here. We can bury 
him to-morrow in the old farm burying- 
ground back of our orchard, but we’re too poor 
to take expense.” 

Certainly it was not right to burden the wid- 
ow. Caught in the toils of fate, Harvey 
Ogden set forth in the storm to buy his enemy’s 
coffin, and when it was brought through the 
cold rain, the cover splashed with the mud of 
the roads, he aided the widow’s son in making 
this that had been his destroyer ready for 
burial. 

Did he forgive him then ? No. A curse and 
a reiterated injury, these had been Andrew 
Mitchell’s last bequest. 

^ j|c * * 

Noon. The rain had ceased falling, and a 
yellow light struggled through the vapors. The 
grave had been filled in and roughly smoothed 
over. 

Harvey Ogden asked for his horse. It was 
time to move on — objectless. The sleuth- 
hounds of revenge could not pursue a trail that 
ended in a grave. Revenge had lost its quarry, 
but hate lived on. He had buried his enemy — 
but he hated him still. As for God, God was 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 57 

further from him than ever, so far off now that 
he had lost him in cold distance, and no longer 
accounted that he was ! 

‘^How about the child?’’ asked the widow. 
‘‘I can’t keep him ; you brought him, you should 
take him.” 

‘‘Where? Poor little creature!” faltered Og- 
den. 

“To the county-house, I reckon. Poor crea- 
ture surely! He is a sweet child, but I can’t 
do for him. We are deep in debt. You’ll pass 
the poorhouse on your road to town ; five miles 
from here it is. You’ll see it.” 

See it ? Of course he would. He had known 
it from his childhood, and as a child, riding by, 
had looked with childish pity and curiosity at 
the miserable inmates — ^unloved infancy, un- 
honored age. 

The widow lifted up the child to the arms of 
Harvey Ogden seated on his horse. There was 
nothing to do but receive him into his bosom 
and ride away slowly, because of the mud. 

The child nestled against Ogden, clutched 
his beard fast for security, and then slept, and 
grew rosy, and dimpled, and cherubic in sleep. 
Then a voice spoke in Harvey Ogden’s ear: 


58 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


‘‘Whoso receiveth one such little child in my 
name, receiveth me.” 

Now you cannot doubt the identity of him 
who in a known voice speaks to you clearly. 
Harvey Ogden knew this voice; it was his 
Lord’s. Then the man thought of another 
child — an infant, sweet and guileless, in whose 
eyes mingled human childhood and eternal 
mysteries: a child sitting upon a woman’s lap 
in a town called Bethlehem; a child who had 
consecrated childhood. And now how heavy 
grew this sleeping child in Harvey Ogden’s 
arms! He weighed like lead, he bore him 
down. Oh, mighty load ! for He who bore the 
world on his heart had put himself in this 
little one’s place, and the man bent and was 
crushed under the immense burden. 

This child, put into a poorhouse to live un- 
welcomed, and unloved, and untended all its 
baby days? Not so; that would be the Christ 
so outcast in him. This child, to live, one by 
one, those thirty-three years lived once by the 
Son of Man, and in them to be delivered over to 
loneliness, ignorance, sin? Then, in him thus 
the Christ betrayed? In sleep the child held 
Harvey fast, and still smiled on. But Harvey 


A MODERN ST. CHRISTOPHER. 59 

now saw only a thorn-crowned head, a “man 
with eyes majestic after death/' . . . There 
was a monotone deep down in his heart re- 
peating : “for me — for me” . . . His heart 
was broken, and, breaking, strangely its life 
was renewed. His arms clasping the babe were 
paralyzed — a Nineteenth Century St. Christo- 
pher, he was carrying the Christ. 

“If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he 
thirst, give him drink," said the voice of the 
Nazarene. This he had done. 

“Sick, and ye visited me; naked, and ye 
clothed me; a stranger, and ye took me in. Ye 
did it unto me. Come, ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom." 

What? There was no question now! Was 
this sun and summer shine breaking over the 
world? Harvey Ogden had again found his 
God, never more to lose him, for now Fie had 
entered into some subtle, masterful, absorbing 
relationship to his soul. Doubts? They had 
vanished like the last folds of the mist ; for God 
was over him, directing all, and in him accept- 
ing all, and in his arms, in the person of his 
enemy's child, he carried — Christ. 

He clearly saw it now : his trusting to self, 


6o 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


resting on his own forgiving for forgiveness; 
his trying to be unto himself his own Saviour. 
All his fabric of self-confidence had crumbled 
into dust, and left him shelterless and prone. 
Then One Divine had lifted him up, and had 
shown him how the new life had been still 
working in him, and now offered to receive as 
to himself all that was done for the little child. 


A Pair of 
Lone Women 






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A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN 


The house was on the corner of a street lead- 
ing out of Russell Square; a lodging-house, of 
course. The portion called a hall was so con- 
tracted that our prospective landlady was 
obliged to stand on the stairs while we con- 
cluded our negotiations, the hall being only 
large enough for our two selves and a tall, nar- 
row, spider-legged desk. This desk the house- 
mistress regarded with the awe and pride be- 
stowed by some on a quartering of a coat of 
arms ; her father had used it when clerking in 
the city. 

‘‘Mrs. Vane — a widow said the head of 
our family, as he filled out a little business doc- 
ument. 

“A spinster,” she replied, with a flush. “At 
my age, and in my occupation, it is our custom 
to say Mrsf^ 

“Oh, yes, certainly. We will move in to- 
morrow.” 

“A good situation has the house, but it is ter- 


62 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


ribly run down inside/' he said, as we went up 
the street. 

“V ery clean, but I doubt if either the under- 
taking or the furniture will hold together long," 
I replied. “I think our moderate payments are 
just putting off utter ruin for a little time." 

We moved in. Mary, the one maid of the 
establishment, received us. “Mrs. Vane was 
out." It was borne in on our minds that she 
was off paying a pressing creditor with the 
money we had given her. 

Mary felt it to be her duty to explain the 
house to us. “She and I have stuck together 
for ten years, ever since she came here. Yes, 
here we are just two lone women. The din- 
ing-room floor is rented to a druggist and his 
two sons. They’ve lived with us a year. This 
floor was driving us crazy, being empty two 
months. The floor above, three rooms, is 
let to medical students. They're a trial; hard 
on the furniture, hard to wait on, hard to get 
money out of, and coming in at all hours of the 
night. The top floor is let, four little rooms, 
to some clerk girls; they have a bite of break- 
fast and go out at seven, and get in at nine at 
night, and we can’t charge them much. Mrs. 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN. 


63 


Vane’s had it awfully hard ; she had to pay out 
for a bad brother, and she had her mother here 
six years, paralyzed, in the back room below. 

‘When she died. Miss Vane moved into the 
third story hall-room, and then into the attic, 
as we got poorer, and for two years she and me 
lived in the basement. We feel for each other. 
I had my folks to see to, and she had to break 
off her marriage promise, along of having her 
mother to see to ; and my lad went to Australia 
years ago, and I had to stay to do for my old 
folks. Hear from them? Oh, they both mar- 
ried years ago. Men in Australia and Dakota 
have to get married; they can’t sit and wait 
for women who can’t come. Work hard? Of 
course, ma’am, and so discouraging, always in 
debt, and falling back. We get clean down- 
hearted. But we take turns going to church 
Sunday afternoons and evenings, and she reads 
a Scripture and a prayer at bed-time, and that 
keeps us up a bit, knowing that the Lord does 
our planning for us, and will bring us out some- 
wheres, and there’s heaven beyond. She likes 
to read out that hymn, ‘How firm a founda- 
tion.’ Ever hear it ?” 

Mary dropped these items of information at 


64 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


various times, as she ‘‘did up the rooms/* We 
felt that Mrs. Vane must have been in straits 
to put up with us for the price. The two chil- 
dren did run in and out, and up and down, a 
deal, and bring in their mates. When their 
owners were away, said pair of children drove 
Mrs. Vane distracted by getting out of the win- 
dow and climbing along the leads ; also dashing 
along the next lower roof and banging down 
the sky-light shutter above the cobbler’s shop, 
reducing him to darkness and inarticulate fury. 
Then, there was the night we went to Parlia- 
ment. We hung breathless on a debate between 
D’ Israeli and Gladstone, and came home at 
three in the morning. Mrs. Vane, sitting on 
the stairs, received us, not with reproaches, but 
with enthusiasm : 

“Oh, I’m glad, so glad, you are come I” 

“What! Anything wrong with the chil- 
dren ?” 

“No, indeed; they’re asleep — hours. Oh, I 
am so glad I I — I thought something had hap- 
pened !” Only when we were visiting the two 
sleepers, before retiring, did it occur to us that 
Mrs. Vane had had horrible apprehensions that, 
either by accident or design, we might have 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN. 65 

fled, leaving those two antic young Americans 
on her hands. Such an episode, added to her 
other calamities, must have loomed before her 
with a peculiar awfulness. 

“We told you we were going to Parliament,'" 
we said, “and that always sits all night.” 

“Does it?” asked Mrs. Vane, who knew 
nothing beyond keeping lodgers. 

We never knew from her that the children 
had called in their particular West Indian 
friends, and kept up a war dance till ten o’clock. 
Oh, no, she was too glad that we were safely 
back. 

Only a few times did I ever invade the base- 
ment. Worn out and shabby, it shone with 
cleanliness. Mrs. Vane wore white cotton 
gloves while she toasted bread and muflins. 
How they kept it neat and well aired I cannot 
tell; she and Mary slept in two unwindowed 
ten by ten closets, which had been storage 
rooms “when the house was a private.” They 
sat in the kitchen together, but differences of 
rank were duly maintained. By the window, 
opening on the front area, lay a square of car- 
pet, on the carpet a rocking-chair with a cush- 
ion. There sat Mrs. Vane. Mary sat outside 


66 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


the square of carpet, on a cushionless chair. By 
Mrs. Vane on the window seat lay her Bible, 
almanac, account-book, hymn-book and work- 
basket. On Mary’s chair hung her knitting 
bag and work bag, both derelicts from some 
lodger. Mary sat down only to eat, and after 
6 p.M. ; for the twelve day hours she was on 
her feet. Mrs. Vane cooked for all her sets of 
lodgers separately whatever they chose to send 
in. The ‘‘coals charge” for the first, third and 
top floors probably provided her own coal. 
Mrs. Vane had care of sending out the laundry 
work, for all but the drawing-room, and she 
and Mary carefully sifted out all hose, ker- 
chiefs, and small articles of underwear, and 
laundried them in the kitchen. The few pence 
of regular charge on these, which they deducted 
from the laundry bill, probably paid for their 
household washings. By such small economies 
they fought the wolf of poverty and debt all 
day long, from half-past six, when they break- 
fasted together on toast and cheap tea, to ten 
at night, when they supped on oaten porridge, 
seated close by their dying fire. 

At a quarter before seven, Mrs. Vane ar- 
ranged the meager breakfast of “The Attics,” 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN. 


67 


and Mary took it up four pairs of stairs. At 
half-past seven, Mary carried up and *daid” 
the breakfast for the three men in the ‘‘dining- 
room.” A quarter after eight saw the cheerful 
creature arranging the drawing-room, and then 
bringing the breakfast which Mrs. Vane had 
cooked for us. The medics rose and shrieked 
for breakfast at any hour between eight and 
eleven, eating in relays just as their whims, 
classes, and homing hours of the previous night 
dictated. I hated to think how many times a 
day Mary carried trays upstairs! Yet Mary 
was always cheerful and grateful, even when 
her face was drawn and her lips white with fa- 
tigue. She “was so thankful to stay in one 
place,” “so glad that she kept well,” and “that 
Mrs. Vane was kind.” Mrs. Vane was less 
cheerful than Mary. She saw the hopeless 
walls of circumstance closing about her, and al- 
ready felt crushed by them ; yet she was always 
patient and faithful. Perhaps her heart wound 
was deeper than Mary’s. She spoke of it once 
or twice in the twilight. She had never forgot- 
ten, but would not remember, because he was 
these years another woman’s husband, and 
father of two little girls ; how else could his in- 


68 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


valid parents have been cared for to the end? 
Yes, parted forever in this world, because of 
duty to their old people. It had been God’s way 
for them — God knew ! 

After six months with Mrs. Vane, we went 
to Hastings, but returning after three months, 
were welcomed with joy to our former rooms. 
Mary said there “had been theatre folks in 
them, making heaps of trouble and very poor 
pay.” We could see that affairs drifted more 
and more rapidly to inevitable ruin. Some- 
times, in our ignorance, we wondered why God 
suffered so much trouble to wait upon these 
“two lone women.” God’s silly sheep are al- 
ways wondering why about something. 

Again we left to seek Brighton; and reach- 
ing London, the season over, I again sought 
our old lodgings. The crash had come. The 
walk and street were littered with splinters of 
wood, wads of paper, wisps of straw. The 
bare, grimy windows were pasted with the scar- 
let announcements, “Auction! Auction!” On 
the house walls were placards, “Lease for 
Sale.” Nobody cared: the cabs rattled by; 
the barrow-men shouted their wares ; across the 
way a bridal party set off for the parish church ; 


A PAIR OP LONE WOMEN. 


69 


next door, the knocker was tied with a white 
glove, because somebody had an heir ; and down 
the street fluttered from a bell pull a long black 
scarf. Mary opened the door — Mary, look- 
ing wearier and worse-fed than ever, her eyes 
swollen by days of weeping. She led me to the 
‘‘dining-room,” empty save for a broken chair, 
on which she advised me to sit with caution. 

“It’s all over,” sobbed Mary. “We’re sold 
out. Everything is gone but our few rags of 
clothes and a handful of worn-out duds in the 
kitchen. Mrs. Vane and me live in the kitchen ; 
we can stay three weeks longer, and then we 
will be set adrift. It’s worse for her than for 
me. I can get a housemaid’s place at a pound 
a month, with a ten years’ recommend from 
her; but what can she get? All she can do is 
keep house and cook, but she’s never lived in 
service and has no recommends. She’s nigh 
worn out her shoes and her strength looking 
for something. Oh, the world’s a cold, hard 
place for a pair of' lone women ! I can’t abear 
to leave her. W e’ve held by each other so long. 
You don’t know how good she was. Always 
her penny for the church plate, and gave me 
mine for evening. Always a good word for 


70 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


the old crossing-sweeper, and having her in to 
warm on very bad days, and always a sixpence 
for her Christmas and Whitmonday, even if 
we two went without meat for it. She saved 
every waste bit from the lodgers' dishes, and 
all the cold tea, and made soups and stews and 
hot drinks for the sick and poor over in the 
mews. Oh, she did what she could — and now 
she’s turned adrift!” 

That evening being raw, cold and drizzly, 
the maid of my new lodgings announced in su- 
percilious tones: person to see you,” and 

ushered in Mrs. Vane, more faded, shabby and 
discouraged than ever. Mary had told her of 
my call, when she returned from her work 
quest, and she had come to see me. I placed 
her in a big chair by the glowing grate, and 
greatly exasperated the supercilious maid by 
bidding her “Bring the lady tea and toast.” 
Mrs. Vane rehearsed the tale told by Mary. 
Things had simply gone from bad to worse, un- 
til they could not go any longer. It was hard 
on Mary, thrown out on the world with not a 
relation left her. In that, she and Mary were 
alike, and ought to hold together, but could not. 
No; she could find nothing. She had one 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN, 


71 


friend, his sister — Clepham way. Not well to 
do, but comfortable. If worst came to worst, 
she would ask her for a shelter while she looked 
further. She hated to burden that friend with 
her affairs ; but soon she would have to go and 
see her, and ask for help in finding a situation 
for Mary. Then she hinted that perhaps, in 
my great land, I knew of some place as house- 
keeper, or linen-room keeper, or even janitress. 
I saw that she hoped that I could give her the 
first mentioned position. Her spirits fell lower, 
if possible, as I guardedly made it clear that 
I had to do my own housekeeping, and could 
not venture to advise her to go to that far new 
world. She left despondently, promising to 
return in a day or two and tell me how she 
fared. 

Not hearing of her for a week, I again 
sought the old place. Mary saw me from the 
basement window, and the hall door burst open 
before I could ring. There stood Mary — an- 
other, new Mary. Her eyes beamed, hope and 
content glowed in her face; she evidently had 
eaten and slept well of late, and she wore a 
voluminous fresh white apron. 

“Come in! Oh, do come in!” cried Mary. 


72 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


‘'She meant to go to you to-night; now I can 
tell you the whole story. It is just God’s do- 
ings. We can’t understand it, but we are so 
happy!” Mary’s voice was full of exclama- 
tions and underlinings. She opened the din- 
ing-room door. “Could you sit on the window 
seat? That old chair is gone; we had to use 
it to cook supper one night. Well, thank the 
dear, kind Lord we are done burning up old 
chairs for evermore.” 

“But what has happened? A housekeeper’s 
place?” 

“Oh, I should say so, just! When she came 
back from you that evening, very dreary and 
sopping, I gave her a letter from his sister, 
Mrs. Lane, saying to come to her sure next day, 
early for breakfast. So she set off by seven. 
She and Mrs. Lane sat down, cozy-like, by a 
big fire, to a hot breakfast, and Mrs. Lane outs 
with a letter from him, long and earnest-like. 
His wife had been dead a year, his two little 
girls were bad off for a mother, and he was 
lonesome to die, and his big farm place needing 
a mistress. Would she persuade her, Mrs. 
Vane, you know, to come out and marry him 
right away ? And to end all, there was a check 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN. 


73 


for sixty pounds for outfit and passage, and he 
would meet her at the ship in New York; also 
let her bring the Mary he had heard of, so she’d 
have right old English helpers. 

“She looked another body when she came 
home that night, bringing twenty-five pounds, 
and telling me all about it I had a bit of soup 
and a potato waiting for her, but she says: 
‘Mary, eat it at once, for I’ve had three good 
meals this day.’ We’ve done a lot of shopping, 
or she has for both, and I have washed and 
mended and given away till we’re all in order, 
and each of us with a good new box. She’s 
got a good gray suit to journey in, and a blue 
to be married in, and some other things; and 
I’ve got a new brown for the trip, and a best 
black wool, and her two best ones made over 
for me. Oh, we’re real well set up, and the 
folks in the mews are to have all we don’t take. 
They’re so sorry we are going, and the church 
people are so glad for us, and we’ve had a lot 
of gifts from them and from Mrs. Lane. Isn’t 
God good to us ? We’re going to sail the day 
before Christmas.” 

That evening Mrs. Vane came to see me. 
She sipped tea and poured out her heart. “Just 


74 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


to think, it’s all right now to femember him 
and feel for him — and there’s the girls. Do 
you think they’ll like me and call me mother? 
Oh, I shall be so glad to have them ! I’ve been 
feeling so poor and lonely and afraid, and here 
I am to have a home and a family, and all any 
one can want!” 

She said they were going second class, so 
she could pay for Mary and they could keep 
together, and she was much delighted that we 
were to sail in the same ship. 

It was on Christmas Day that the shores of 
England, which had been to them a land of 
desolation, faded from the eyes of Mrs. Vane 
and Mary. We looked down upon them from 
the upper deck, and wondered if there were 
happier hearts on the great ship. 

The Dakota farmer met them at the dock. 
We wondered if, after the hard buffetings of 
over sixteen years, he and Mrs. Vane would 
know each other’s faces speedily; but whether 
or no, they were soon together, and we all ad- 
journed to a hotel, where the farmer had en- 
gaged a parlor. 

There our eldest hope and his sister were 
speedily transformed to usher and bridesmaid; 


A PAIR OF LONE WOMEN. 75 

the hotel clerk and a guest or two were called 
in as witnesses, and the head of our family 
spoke the words that ended the long, sad years 
of parting, and made two one. 

Mary cried violently and audibly into her 
best kerchief. Why, we did not know, unless 
she felt it to be a leave-taking due to short ra- 
tions and long stairs. 

The ex-Englishman had contracted the gen- 
ial manners of the West; he clapped Mary on 
the shoulder, saying, ‘^Cheer up, girl; there's 
a fine fellow on my place will be saying these 
words with you in a year's time.” 

Life had dealt kindlier with him than with 
Mrs. Vane. He was stout, jolly, florid ; but we 
saw her growing fresher and younger every 
minute, with the great gladness of her heart. 

He drew her hand under his arm. ‘The girls 
didn’t get a Christmas tree this year,” he said, 
“but they’re ’lotting on the mother dressing 
them a real English one next year.” 

Mary deftly fastened on her mistress’s hat 
and cloak, and they took leave, Mary finding 
time to whisper to me between her bows and 
curtseys, “Don’t it pass all telling that she and 
I ain’t a ‘Pair of Lone Women’ any longer!” 


‘‘HIPS, HAWS, 

AND A BIT O’ GREEN.” 

I WAS in the bow-window, trying to catch 
on my book the reluctant light of the English 
December day. From near by came the pound- 
ing of the waves on the stony beach of 
Brighton, and through the steep, narrow street 
the bath-chair men were wheeling home their 
fares. 

A tap at the door announced Mary, the maid 
who ‘‘did for the lodgers.” “If you please, 
ma’am, are you ready for a new centre-piece? 
It’s Saturday afternoon, and I thought perhaps 
you’d take some of these for a change. Only 
‘hips, haws, and a bit o’ green.’ ” 

“It is beautiful, Mary ; yes, I’ll take it.” 

“She is such a poor, honest, hard-workin’, 
lonely old body, ma’am, I feel so sorry for her. 
Twopence a bunch, ma’am; there are five 
bunches; will you have two?” asked Mary, 
hopefully. 

“Where does she get anything like that in 
this big, stony city?” 






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**HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT O' GREEN." 

“Oh, ma’am, she rises by dawn and wanders 
away out in the country. Then back again to 
sell, and on her feet all weathers, till dark night. 
Tve known her since I came to the house, five 
years gone. I’d like to help her, indeed, but I 
have my own old folks to see to. All I can do is 
ask the lodgers to buy now and then; and I 
save up for her the left-over tea, and things 
that are not wanted again on the tables. She is 
so contented when I heat them up for her. I 
just gave her the last of the meat-pie you said 
you’d not care for more. Such a dinner as 
she made of it! Then the missis often gives 
her a penny or two for cleaning the steps, or the 
sidewalk, when we are busy.” 

“I’ll give you a shilling for them all,” I said ; 
and Mary began deftly to arrange the bunches 
in a glass dish. Vivid red rose hips, darker red 
fruit of hawthorn, tiny ferns, bits of green 
holly, and juniper, with blue berries shining 
over it; with these, ghostly sprays of grass, 
bleached to dull gray or tan color — an exquisite 
winter bouquet. 

“Glad she’ll be!” said Mary, her fresh, 
cheery, English face shining with delight. 
“Now she can go home and get dry and warm. 


78 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


It’s pitiful how cold and wet the poor body 
gets.” 

“But who would hinder her going home? 
Her family?” 

“She has none, ma’am. She’s a lone body. 
It’s the landlady. The rooms are sixpence a 
day, and no one can pass up at night till the 
sixpence for the day is paid. Often she’s 
had to stay out till ten, waiting to earn that 
sixpence, and well for her then if she has a few 
coals, or a crust, or a candle left over to comfort 
herself.” 

Mary went away with the shilling and the 
empty bark basket. My book had ceased to in- 
terest me. There was a deeper pathos in hu- 
man life; it seemed that there were heart his- 
tories in these streets. 

Again a tap at the door, and now beside 
Mary appeared a little old woman. 

“She wanted to come up and thank you her- 
self, ma’am,” said Mary, doing her part as 
mistress of ceremonies. 

The seller of “hips, haws and a bit o’ green” 
was as faded and wrinkled as a last year’s beech 
leaf. A pair of blue eyes shone with a frosty 
light under bleached brows and hair, a little 


^‘HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT 0 ’ GREEN 79 

black shawl was wound about her head and 
neck, another threadbare shawl covered her 
bent, shrunken shoulders. She reminded me of 
gnarled, wind-beaten, time-worn, scrubby 
bushes that cling in barren ground and fight 
inhospitable elements, surviving barely — even 
that, we know not how. 

“Thank you, indeed, my lady. I am so glad 
to get all sold out. Now I can go home early, 
and with the extra twopence you paid me I can 
have another pen’orth of coal an’ a pen’orth o’ 
bacon. You see, on Saturday night I’m so glad 
to get my washing done, and get to bed early. 
It takes things long to dry, these chilly nights.” 

Mary smiled at my mystification, and ex- 
plained. 

“She has no clothes but what she has on her, 
ma’am, and she’s a clean old body; so nights 
she washes out her stockings and underclothes, 
and leaves them to dry while she is abed.” 

“But I’ve a good flannel night-gown, one of 
the church ladies gave me,” said the old body. 

“I think your landlady is very cruel to keep 
you out of your room till you earn that six- 
pence,” I said. “How would she like it to be 
kept out, cold, wet and tired ?” 


8o 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


“But ma’am, she’s only a sub-letter; and 
she’d be out in the street herself if she couldn’t 
collect from the lodgers, let alone havin’ five lit- 
tle children and an old mother to do for ! She’s 
not bad to me. She knows I’m honest, and I’ve 
lived there six years. Twice she’s let me in 
without the money, but I paid her up, faithful. 
It’s rules, you know. The most of ’em, if they 
got in without the money, ’d never think more 
about it. More’n once, when the sixpence took 
my last penny, she gave me a cup of tea, or 
broth, out of her own kettle. She lets me dry 
my night-gown by her fire, when I wash it in 
the morning, an’ she often saves up suds for me 
when I have no soap. No, ma’am, she ain’t 
cruel.” 

“You may bring me five bunches of your 
diips, haws and green’ every Saturday night,” 
I said, “and when you bring them, come up and 
see me.” 

Mary told me that this little old dame “did 
that street” Wednesdays and Saturdays, going 
elsewhere other days. I directed her always 
to save something from our table for a meal 
for her on the days she came, and to bring her 
up to see me if I were in the house. I soon be- 


^^HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT O' GREEN/' 8i 

came very well acquainted with the old woman. 
On Sabbath, she told me, they had no rent to 
pay, as none of them could earn anything; the 
sixpences for the six days covered the week I 
thought seventy-five cents a week high for the 
little third-story room, but she told me it was 
‘‘a vast o’ comfort havin’ no drunken folks in 
with you, to raise an uproar and steal your 
bread and tea.” Also, she had a grate in her 
room with a hob, and it was “fine comfort to 
sit by your fire, and dry yourself, and sip a 
cup of hot tea. When one had a candle and 
enough coals to heat water for a clean wash, 
and to wash one’s clothes, it was prime, surely.” 
She had, too, some furniture included in the 
room rent, a table, a bed and two chairs. She 
owned the bedclothes, and Mary confided to 
me that she “didn’t have half enough, and near- 
ly chilled nights.” 

“I should think your clothes would be damp 
and not fit to put on in the morning,” I said to 
her. 

That happened, she admitted. She had “tak- 
en cold from damp hose ; but Mary, good girl, 
had given her a pair of stockings, and with two 
pair she got on well.” 


82 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


^‘But your other underclothes ?” 

‘‘Oh, yes, truly. Last winter as ever was, 
she nearly got ‘amony’ by puttin’ on a damp 
shift ; but now she tried to have a bit more fire 
when she washed. That time last winter, she 
had to go to hospital for a whole month. They 
were very good to her there, and nurse gave her 
a flannel petticoat, and got the night-gown for 
her when she came away. All the same, she 
was too weak to work, and had to go to ‘The 
House’ for the winter. They were kind to her 
at the House, but one liked to be independent, 
and she hoped not to go there again.” 

Did she sell these same things all the year 
round ? 

“Of course not. They were only to be found 
in fall and winter, you know. In early spring 
there was cress an’ primroses, also groundsel 
for the birds. There was furze, too, that some 
people liked very early, and some painter ladies 
bought of her moss and lichens and all kinds of 
of wild seed-pods. There was ivy, too, and 
pussy willows; and, in spring, hawthorn flow- 
ers and cuckoopint and guelder roses. Vio- 
lets and ferns were very good. Poppies were 
no good; ladies liked ’em, but they faded on 


•'HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT 0 ’ GREEN/* 83 

your hands afore night, after all the trouble o’ 
getting them. Taken all in all, hips, haws an’ 
a bit o’ green was the best you could do. 

‘‘No; she hadn’t always lived in the town. 
She was country born. Ah, it was prime to be 
a child in the country! The parish minister 
had a school for the colliers’ children, and she 
learned to read a bit. She could read her Bi- 
ble still, the print being big, if the light was 
good Sundays. Oh, yes, she needed glasses, no 
doubt; she couldn’t thread her needle no more 
to mend — but glasses cost too dear. 

“In the country days it had been lovely — ^the 
people worked in the fields, planting, reaping 
and so on — hard work, but they were happy, 
and sang, and had enough to eat. Times used 
not to be as hard as now. She had learned to 
sew and knit, and had recited all her Catechism. 
Her brothers and sisters scattered away, and 
her old folks died. She married. Thomas was 
a kind man, but he was weakly. She had had 
five children, but all died, only one, and times 
got so bitter hard. The farms, you know, were 
all put into sheepwalks, and then the day- 
workers were crowded out and had to come to 
the town. Thomas died, poor man ; he wasn’t 


84 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


as tough as she was. The last child, a little 
girl, was that pretty ! When she got up to ten 
or eleven, the church ladies said she oughtn’t 
to be out sellin’ flowers, she should be trained 
for service. They were mighty good, and they 
provided Ellen and sent her up near London, 
to where they train for service, six years ago. 
She had a letter from Ellen two or three times 
a year. She had to get some one to read it and 
answer it; she didn’t understand hand-write. 
The paper, stamp and envelope cost twopence. 
She didn’t always have twopence. 

^‘Now Ellen was put into a place, and she 
sent the paper and stamped envelope, and she 
sent her, in the summer, five shillings to buy 
stuff for a gown. Ellen meant well by her, but 
Ellen got small wages yet, and had to dress neat 
or the lady would not keep her. Yes, she 
thanked the Lord every day that he’d taken care 
of Ellen. Maybe come Christmas she’d have 
another letter from her.” 

‘‘And what did she mean to do on Christ- 
mas?” 

“Oh, she’d have a good time Christmas! 
Seemed it made folks kinder just remember 
how the dear Lord was born — born poor, too, 


‘HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT O’ GREEN.” 85 


like poor folks. She sold more things Christ- 
mas, and people wanted more errands done. 
The man where she got her groceries was go- 
ing to give her a handful of raisins for her pud- 
ding.” 

“What groceries did she buy?” we asked, 
with amused interest. 

“There’s the bread, you know — the stale 
loaves — the tea, a pen’orth now and then, a 
pen’orth of sugar when I can afford it. Now 
and then a bit of bacon, and a herring or two, 
a pen’orth of potatoes for Sunday, or some 
meal for gruel. Always at one place, and al- 
ways bring back the paper and string. So the 
grocer gets to know you, and gives you Christ- 
mas raisins?” 

“And how about that pudding?” 

“Oh, you see I save up all along before 
Christmas a ha’penny or a farthing, and by and 
by I have a penny for suet and tuppence for 
flour, and enough to burn coal from noon till 
bed-time, and twopence for some good soup 
bones, and a Christmas dinner I do have — a 
thick soup and suet pudding. 

“If I can, I ask somebody that has none in to 
eat with me. We must be good to each other. 


86 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


you know. I sell more hips, haws and a bit o’ 
green Christmas Day. Folks like ’em for trim- 
ming, and I go to the mornin’ church, and I 
feel all warmed up like.” 

Such were the confidences doled out in parts 
as my old lady came up to see me and bring 
the ‘‘hips, haws and a bit o’ green” with 
which our table shone. 

How had she happened to take to this way of 
making a living? we asked. 

“She had to do something, you know, and 
being country reared, in out-door work, she did 
not know work and ways to please city people. 
No doubt it was the country blood in her that 
sent her to the woods and waysides to pick up 
things for her living, and she always had so 
loved things that grew wild-like.” 

Our party decided that we could not sleep 
well, knowing that this old creature shivered 
the nights through. We also felt that we owed 
it to common Christianity to make a thank- 
ofifering for our sight, in the shape of specta- 
cles for her; so Mary was commissioned to fit 
her with spectacles and buy a good warm bed- 
quilt. The dame’s gratitude was pathetic. 

There were two glad-eyed girls with me, and 


‘‘HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT O’ GREEN/’ 87 

they were always present to see the little old 
dame, and they did much planning. She was 
told to come to us the last thing on Christmas 
Eve, and bring us some greenery. The girls 
then investigated their trunks and their purses. 
They found for their old dame a jacket, a dress 
skirt, and two woollen under suits. They 
bought her a black hood, two pair of hose, a 
large alpaca apron and a pair of flannel-lined 
shoes. These things they packed in a basket. 
In another basket I put a pound each of tea, 
coffee, sugar, cheese, sausage and bacon. When 
on Christmas Eve the poor body appeared, blue 
with cold, but bravely smiling, and so proud 
and happy that she had made our bunches of 
“hips, haws and a bit o’ green” half as large 
again as any others, we gave her the baskets 
as a Christmas present. 

“All that for me?” she cried, with a little 
sob, “for me! Why, here I’ve lived for sixty 
year, and never hed but one or two wee bits o’ 
Christmas presents I Do, ladies, let me look at 
’em here! Oh, I want to know what it all is, 
and see how good you’ve been to a poor crea- 
ture.” 

She unpacked her treasures, with a running 


88 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


comment of joyful gratitude: ‘‘Oh, how rich 
lam! Did ever one get the like before 1 Sure- 
ly now I needn’t stay in bed all Sunday for my 
clothes to dry. I can go to church and look 
fatten. The good God put it in your hearts. 
Yes, Tm not forsaken; he sent you to me, to 
do for him. It’s like I see his own hand held 
out to me with the things. So many clothes! 
So much to eat !” 

The glad eyes of the girls were filled with 
tears. For the first time they knew the real 
worth of money, and saw how much a little of 
it could do. The whole value of the gifts was 
within half a pound sterling ! 

They realized how very narrow and barren 
some lives are. Mary stood openly wiping her 
tears, and over the weather-beaten cheeks of the 
old woman tears of happiness rolled. 

Then, but by the door, the Waits began to 
sing. “Betty Grant will have only dry bread 
and thin tea to-morrow,” said the old dame, 
“I’ll ask her to eat with me. One must do what 
good one can, surely.” 

We wished that all the world held and prac- 
tised her simple adage. 

Christmas Day we were just preparing to go 


‘^HIPS, HAWS, AND A BIT O’ GREEN.’! 89 

forth and see the merry-making in Brighton 
streets, when Mary brought in our seller of 
“hips, haws and a bit o’ green.” Her face was 
glorified by joy — she had a letter in her hard, 
brown hand. “I had to come and tell you, 
ma’am, and young ladies. I knew you’d be 
glad. I won’t stop you a minute. I’m going 
to church to thank God ! Oh, I felt like falling 
on my knees in the street, every minute, to 
thank him. It’s from Ellen, ma’am. Would 
you read it? Oh, but she’s doing well. She 
hasn’t forgotten me. See, she sent me ten shil- 
ling ! When I got home last night, didn’t I find 
rolled in one of the stockings three new shil- 
lings, one from each of you? And I had the 
shilling for the ‘hips, haws and a bit o’ green’ 
I brought you. Fourteen shilling, ma’am! I 
never had so much at once before. Now I’m 
sure not to have to go to the House this winter. 
Oh, isn’t God good to me!” 

She trudged off to church, letter in hand, as 
happy a heart as was that day in queenly Brigh- 
ton. Behind her, up the street, strolled some 
Waits, making the air ring again with their 
Christmas carols — the crash of the sea on the 
beach undertoned, like the thunders of a great 


go 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


organ, the shrill lifting of the boy voices. To 
us the day looked glad for the gladness of that 
patient, thankful soul, which our Father had 
seen fit to feed, as he feeds the sparrows, with 
hips, haws and a bit o’ green out of the hedge- 
rows. 


The Case of Carola 





THE CASE OF CAROLA 


AN ITALIAN CHRISTMAS EPISODE 

The city was fair Florence. The house was 
the Palazzo Guicciardini, famous in history, in 
literature, in tyranny, romance and evangelism. 
The vast, bold front of the house rose bastion- 
like from the dark, narrow street and swept in 
two wings back, enclosing a small garden filled 
with roses, oleander, myrtle and lemon trees, 
and resting upon the Arno. 

One wing was occupied by the Counts of 
Guicciardini, the other by a Florentine silk 
merchant of the De' Medici stirps. The great 
antique front of the house was delivered over 
to the curious medley of nineteenth century life, 
with its motley and tragedy, its pathos and par- 
simony. There were the bottegas on the first 
floor, which we calmly ignored except when we 
needed fuel ; the ex-diplomat and his wife, the 
ex-court lady, on the second floor, with their 
household and their tarnished gilt and brocade 


92 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


furniture ; there were the Russian countess and 
her three nephews on the third floor; above 
them the Signora who took English and Amer- 
ican lodgers; skyward still, the music-master 
and the dancing-mistress, and the two old ladies 
who made and mended lace and embroidery. 
Finally, up among the chimney-pots and roof- 
tiles, and the boxes of flowers which formed 
his aerial garden, lived his reverence, the Ca- 
pellano, who baptized the Guicciardini babies, 
kept vigils beside their dead, said a daily mass 
for them in Santa Trinita and pronounced 
grace at high family festivals. 

Among all this ebullient human hive, Carola, 
old, small, browned and seamed, was perhaps 
the most unconsidered human unit. 

“I hope the lodgings will please the Madame 
and the service prove satisfactory. Carola is a 
very faithful, cleanly, industrious creature and 
perfectly honest. Her one fault is that she is 
too much given to praying. But what would 
you have? Madame knows that no servants 
are perfect! Most of them have Plenaria In- 
dulgenza, which enables them to miscount the 
oil bottles, drink the wine and eat the chops. 
Therefore, I keep Carola in spite of her pray- 


THE CASE OF CAROLA. 


93 


ing, because with her my lire and centessimi are 
safe.’’ 

We ventured to remark that praying seemed 
a very venial offence; in fact, we had never 
heard it noted as heading the long count of 
crimes. 

‘‘Virtues,'^ said the Signora, shrugging her 
shoulders with an air of Kantian profundity, 
‘‘may become crimes if carried to excess. Ma- 
dame will see how it is when the breakfast is an 
hour late, the Signor is cultivating the temper 
of a raging lion, and the two blessed children 
are as hungry as kites.’^ 

The coming weeks continued this parable: 
“Yes, Madame, I know the breakfast is late, 
but, unhappily, the creamery is on the other 
side of St. Peter's chapel, and wild horses could 
not drag Carola past without her stopping to 
pray. I hope the tutor will not be angry with 
the blessed children for what is not their fault.” 
“Oh, to be sure Madame, dinner ought to be on 
the table; the vegetables are all getting cold 
and the meat drying up, but what will you 
have? I’ve sent Carola for the salad and the 
dessert, and she is praying, no doubt, in Santa 
Trinita. Oh ! I must surely dismiss that 


94 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Carola ; then we shall have a maid who will eat 
up all the olives/^ ‘‘Yes, Madame, supper 
should have been a half an hour ago, but, un- 
happily, the roast chestnut man has moved his 
stand a block down the street, which gives Car- 
ola a church to pass and more praying to do/' 

One day Carola was in my room, and I 
thought I would interview her for myself. She 
had brushed down the chimney-place, washed 
the hearthstones, piled the embers in a choco- 
late-colored heap ready to break into red fire 
at a smart rap from the poker, and laid the 
fascine ready to make a bright blaze when the 
family came home. 

“Carola,” I said, “I hear that you have a 
great deal of praying to do.” 

She turned about, sitting on her heels, her 
worn hands clasped about her knees. 

“Certainly, Madame. In this so sorrowful 
world, where hearts have so many burdens to 
carry and so great, what can one do but pray?” 

“That is true, Carola, and prayer is a great 
comfort and privilege.” 

“Then Madame does not think that prayer 
is all useless and that the great Lord has only 
a deaf ear for poor Carola?” 


THE CASE OF CAROLA, 


95 


‘^By no means, my Carola. The good Lord 
himself says that ‘Men ought always to pray 
and not to faint ) that he will ‘avenge his own 
elect which cry day and night unto him;’ that 
we should pray without ceasing, and that we 
should ask believing that we shall receive.” 

“Then, Madame, you do not believe, as the 
Signora does, that the great Lord has so many 
kings and queens and lords and ladies that he 
is angry with a poor old contadina serving-wo- 
man for pouring out her tears and prayers in 
his presence?” 

“Oh, Carola, on the contrary, he is goodness 
itself; before his eyes princes and contadini 
are all on a level. When he lived in this world 
he dwelt among plain, common people, and his 
brethren in the flesh were simple contadini. 
Perhaps you could tell me some of your trou- 
bles, Carola?” 

“The heart stories of the poor are but short, 
Madame. I was born on the hills near Fiesole. 
We rented our little vine and olive groves of 
the Count and worked as our fathers had done, 
but the young people to-day have more pride, 
and my Giacomo wanted to own the land. He 
said he would go to America for a matter of a 


96 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


few years and earn the money to buy our home. 
It is more than six years since he went. Trou- 
bles came in at the door where his feet went 
out. Jacopo was drafted for the army. Then 
my husband died, and Jacopo died in Africa. 
What could I do, Madame? The Count said 
to me, ^Carola, it needs a man to till the acres, 
for I must have my rent. When your Giacomo 
comes again with money in his hands the 
place is his for the buying; meanwhile I must 
have a man for a tenant.’ So, Madame, I came 
down here to Florence to service. It is more 
than four years, and no word of Giacomo. 
Madame, my heart is breaking. I moan more 
than I sleep at night. Grief is my bread. I 
drink the rivers of my tears. All day long my 
heart cries Giacomo, Giacomo ! For what is a 
mother when her son is gone? I am like a 
withered weed by the roadside. What is there 
in store for me? If I fall ill I shall be carried 
to the Lazaretto ; if I am too old to work I must 
go to the house of public alms. I am a mother 
without a son, a woman without a home, a 
heart without comfort. Do you wonder that I 
must pray?” 

‘Tt is the only thing you can do, Carola, and 


THE CASE OF CAROLA. 


97 


if you persevere I am sure you will get an an- 
swer. The Lord especially says that he hears 
prayer, that he is near to those who call upon 
him, and that ‘whatever we ask in Christ’s 
name we shall receive.’ ” 

“Madame, there are some that tell me that I 
am wicked and insult God when I keep pray- 
ing to him at my work; I pray when I am 
sweeping, or scrubbing, or dressing vegetables ; 
but what will you have? I must pray or die.” 

“This is not wrong, but right, Carola; God 
says that we must pray everywhere and at all 
times. He says ‘pray always,’ ‘pray without 
ceasing,’ ‘pray in the depths,’ so it is evident 
that we must pray while about our daily work.” 

“Again, Madame, some tell me I should pray 
to the Blessed Mother and the Holy Saints. 
That might do very well if I had little troubles 
that I could get along with any way. But for 
terrible agonies like mine, that are tearing the 
blood out of my heart, I must speak to Do- 
meniddio (the Lord God) himself; he only is 
strong enough to help me. The Blessed 
Mother might have her favorites, the Holy 
Saints might be too busy, only Domeniddio 
can succor me.” 


98 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


“You are right again, Carola. The heart of 
God is large and tender. He says that he pities 
like a father and comforts like a mother, that 
his arm is never short and his ear never heavy.’’ 

After this, if our household affairs were 
somewhat irregular, the Signora, with a spice 
of acrimony, referred to me as an aider and 
abettor of Carola. 

Christmas week we bought an enormous tur- 
key, the very pride of the Florentine market, 
and prepared to keep Christmas in home fash- 
ion. 

In such apartments as these in the Palazzo 
Guicciardini the kitchen lies nearest the door 
opening upon the staircase, and you pass it in 
going to the living-rooms in front or rear. 
Coming in on Christmas morning, I saw in the 
Signora’s kitchen the reverend capellano, his 
rusty tricorne on his bald head, his threadbare 
black soutane gathered out of harm’s way in 
one hand, his well-darned stockings tightly gar- 
tered to his knees, his priestly right hand hold- 
ing a meat-forklike Neptune’s trident, which 
transfixed our turkey, browning before the big 
charcoal fire on that pile of masonry which rep- 
resents an Italian stove. The capellano’ s face 


THE CASE OF CAROLA. 


99 


was as red as the embers, and little rivulets of 
perspiration trickled down upon the folds of his 
clerical vest. 

Presently the Signora came to us something 
distracted. “Everything is cooked and will be 
spoiled ; but Carola has gone for the fruit and 
is making her prayers longer than ever. Surely 
I shall dismiss her this night.’' 

“If you do not mind the waiting yourself, 
Signora, set the dinner on, and Carola will be 
back before we are ready for the fruit.” 

As the Signora laid the viands, we asked 
concerning the capellano’s presence in the 
kitchen. 

“Oh, Madame, that turkey was so big that 
the spit would not hold it up. We sent Carola 
to borrow a key which the capellano has, to 
strengthen the spit. Then the spit would not 
turn, and that atrocious bird was resolved to 
be black on one side and white on the other, 
which is a diabolical style of cooking for a tur- 
key. The capellano came to see if we could 
use the key, and finding me with the table to 
set, the sauces to make, and Carola off praying, 
he offered to stay and hold the bird in place, 
so it should not be ruined.” 




100 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


“Blessed nineteenth century,” said the head 
of the house, “to-day his reverence grills my 
turkey ; three hundred years ago he would with 
equal alacrity have grilled me. Signora, pre- 
sent our grateful compliments to the capellano, 
and request him to come and help eat the tur- 
key which he has helped to cook.” 

The Signora returned from her errand, a lit- 
tle sardonic beam in her dark eyes. “His rever- 
ence says that ^this is doubtless the finest and 
best-cooked turkey in Florence; the Signor is, 
no doubt, a learned gentleman ; Madame is ad- 
mirable to a high degree ; the two children are 
cherubs; but may all the saints forbid that he 
should ever dishonor his cloth by sitting down 
to eat with a married priest.' ” 

The frescoed walls about us rang with laugh- 
ter, led by the married priest. “Bring a large 
plate. Signora,” said the M. P. (not member 
of Parliament), “and add to a goodly portion 
of the turkey part of all the other dishes on the 
table, and with our regards request his rever- 
ence to eat them wherever his conscience will 
permit.” 

Our dinner was again in progress, when 
there was a clatter of feet on the stone flooring 


THE CASE OF CAROLA. 


lOI 


of the hall. The dining-room door burst open, 
and there, grasping with one hand a big, 
brown, honest, well-clad fellow of thirty, and 
with the other an exceedingly pretty girl of 
twenty, was Carola — Carola, glowing, flashing, 
flaming, rejuvenated with joy. 

^‘Behold ! Madame ! It is he ! my Giacomo ! 
God has given him back to me. Signora, never 
again say that much praying is useless. Look 
at him ! He was given back to me at the very 
altar of my God !” 

“Carola, tell us how all this happened.” 

“Madame, you must know that once when a 
mission was being preached in the Duomo, I 
stopped in for a good word. A tall preacher 
in a white surplice was up in the pulpit, and 
when he waved his arms over his head he 
looked like a great snowy bird. All I got of his 
words was ‘To-day, to-day, now is the accepted 
time.’ Ever since then, when I pass the Duomo 
and see the great altar all light and gold, and 
flowers and incense, I think that perhaps the 
Lord God himself may be there, and that now is 
the hour when he will hear Carola. It was so 
with me to-day. I slipped in to pray just one 
moment, and I bent down beside a young man 


102 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


and woman whose faces were bowed to their 
knees. When I thought that such, so strong 
and living, might Giacomo be, a great flood of 
agony surged over my heart, and I sobbed half 
aloud, ‘Oh God, give back Giacomo to Carola 
Barci ! Oh, send him home from America, and 
let Carola die on the Fiesole hills, where she 
nursed her children !” Then the young man be- 
side me caught me in his arms and drew me to 
the porch saying, ‘Mother, mother it is I, your 
Giacomo; see! I have been up to Fiesole and 
bought our home. I have looked for you here 
in Florence this ten days, and to-day Nita and 
I meant to pray and search in every church in 
Florence to find our mother.^ Then the young 
woman who had come out to us said, ‘Yes, and 
I am Nita, his wife.^ Then I stretched out my 
arms toward the great altar, and I cried, ‘Oh 
Domeniddio, how much larger is thy giv- 
ing than my asking.’ Then I said, ‘Come, my 
children, I must show you to the Madame, and 
take her the fruit for her dinner.’ But Nita 
said, ‘Delay a minute; we have a little room 
close by the Duomo, and our baby is there ; he 
is as beautiful as the angels of God ; come and 
give him your blessing.’ So I went, and truly. 


THE CASE OF CAROLA. 


103 


Madame, that child is the loveliest child that 
ever was seen.” 

‘^And you, Giacomo,” we said, “what is to be 
done now ?” 

“We will go to our little home on the hills, 
where we will all work and be happy.” 

“Did you get none of the letters your mother 
had written to you?” 

“No, Madame; she had them directed to 
America, and America is wide.” 

“Did you not write to her?” 

“Twice each year, Madame, but on some of 
the letters I failed to put those little colored 
things they called stamps. Four of them 
reached our home. They were directed to my 
father, the one who could read, and the post- 
master has them now on a shelf. He said. Why 
should he give my mother letters addressed to 
my father, who has gone into the glory of God, 
where letters do not come ? I should for a while 
have broken stones on the road with that post- 
master’s head, only for the teaching I have 
promised to follow, and which says we must 
give place to wrath.” Giacomo looked as if he 
considered his new rule of conduct altogether 
too strenuous in its demands. 


104 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


‘^Come, Signora/’ said the head of the house, 
‘‘bring a basket and some dishes, and let us fill 
them well from everything that is here on the 
table for these good people, that they may go 
home together and eat their Christmas dinner 
with their beautiful bambino; and a blessing 
go with them !” 

^^And shall God not avenge his own elect 
which cry day and night unto him, though he 
hear long with themT 


Two Mother Hearts 













TWO MOTHER HEARTS 


A FEW months ago I entered, after nightfall, 
the crowded station at Kansas City. Having 
found a chair, I presently discovered that an 
elderly colored woman was seated next to me. 
She evidently belonged to that race of faithful, 
old-time servants that seems now to be disap- 
pearing. She was spotlessly clean, wore a black 
gown, black woollen gloves, a warm black cloak, 
and held a small black leather bag. Her gray 
locks came out, here and there, from under a 
bandanna kerchief, the ends of which were 
brought about and tied in a tiny knot above her 
forehead. Her face was profoundly sad, yet full 
of patience; she made no parade of her grief, 
but big tears rolled one after another from un- 
der her steel-bowed spectacles, and now and 
again she lifted a finger to wipe the drops away. 
She looked so lonely there, silently weeping 
among the careless crowds, that I bent toward 
her, saying : ‘Auntie, you seem very sad ; I am 
so sorry for you.*’ 

“Yes, misstis, I am sad, for sure. I am go- 


io6 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


ing back to New Orleans. Fve just only one 
daughter, an’ she won’t be livin’ when I get 
there ! She’s the las’ of my fam’bly, an’ nach- 
erlly I thought she’d live to bury me; an’ now, 
I can’t even say ‘good-bye’ an’ give her one kiss 
’fore she goes away.” 

“That is hard, indeed ; but she may live until 
you reach her,” I suggested. 

“Her daughter telegraph me she was at the 
point of dyin’. I got the telegraph this morn- 
ing, an’ started.” 

“If she has a daughter, she is at least taken 
care of.” 

“Oh, yes, missy. I’ve much to be thankful 
for; she has a good home, an’ two girls near 
grown, and a kind husband ; she lacks nothing ; 
thank the Lord for that.” 

“I hope you know, too, that she is God’s 
child, and does not fear death ?” 

“Oh, yes, missy. There’s another thing to 
bless God for! Sophie’s a remarkable good, 
pious woman. We was all well brought up, 
Christianly; and that’s a thing to be thankful 
for.” 

“Is it long since you saw her?” 

“Better’n a year. I meant to go visit her 


TWO MOTHER HEARTS. 107 

Christmas, but she’ll be gone. You see, Miss 
Laura, she moved up into Missouri, to her son, 
an’ her home broke up. Of course, I had to 
come ’long with Miss Laura. I waited on her 
all her life. Miss Laura’s older’n I am, an’ 
she’s delicate ; course, she couldn’t get on with- 
out me, an’ I couldn’t get on ’thout her ; we’re 
used to each other. I need to wait on her an’ 
’tend her when she ain’t well, and do her little 
cookin’ nice; so I come with her, seein’ Sophie 
was well an’ strong, an’ nobody needed me like 
Miss Laura. When the news come to-day. Miss 
Laura helped me to get ready, an’ she read me 
a few of the good Lord’s words to keep my 
heart up, and we had a little prayer. Miss 
Laura an’ me often prays togedder. She told 
me to ’member that God takes his chillun home 
from evil to come, an’ she an’ me, we’d lived 
long to suffer much. Yes, missy, I know it is 
like the kin’ Father callin’ in his own out of the 
storm. I feel thankful that Sophie ain’t to 
leave any real little baby-chillun, an’ the big 
girls is good an’ orderly to care for the fam’bly. 
The Lord don’t sen’ more'n we kin bear. Trou- 
bles come hard, but his hand measures ’em out 
to us. Yes, I am thankful the Lord tol’ you to 


io8 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


speak to me. It’s give me comfort, jus’ as I 
was nigh breakin’ down.” 

She rose; her train was called. “Trust and 
be not afraid,” I said ; and light shone through 
tears and wrinkles, as she made answer, “Yes, 
missy, I will.” 

I watched her brisk, sturdy figure departing 
in the crowd. “Go in this thy strength,” I said 
in my heart. God was holding her hand, and 
easing the weight of her load. 


In a few minutes an elderly, well-dressed 
woman, escorted by two men, came to the old 
auntie’s abandoned chair. The elder man, 
coarse, red-faced, of the saloon-keeper type, 
placed a large portmanteau at the woman’s 
feet ; the younger, a refined, frail youth of some 
twenty-five, said: “We’ll get the sleeper tick- 
ets.” As they moved away, she gave a sigh 
that was really a subdued groan of agony. I 
looked at her ; above a fur-trimmed coat rose a 
face white as marble, and — as hard; her great 
dark eyes were full of anguish, too deep for 
tears; her black hair rippled in natural waves 
about what had been a face of remarkable beau- 
ty, and was still beautiful. 


TWO MOTHER HEARTS. 


109 


I felt impelled to stir that icy misery that 
seemed to grip her heart like a convulsion. I 
said : “They will come back to you soon.” 

She looked at me fixedly for a second, then 
broke forth : “Yes, to-night; but for how long? 
He will leave me soon forever! Don’t you see 
it ? Death has hold of him. That younger one, 
my son — my last — all I have, and he’s going 
from me ! I started a week ago to take him to 
San Antonio. He was so worn out when we 
reached here I had to stop over and send for a 
doctor. That other man is a friend ; we went to 
his house; it’s near the station, and he’s been 
kind to us. We came from Minnesota. I’ve 
been so many places with him, trying to cure 
him, and nothing helps! Oh, once I thought 
to have respectability and money enough, that 
was enough to make one content ! I have that ; 
but my heart burns like a fire. I am torn in 
pieces with sorrow! I wrote to some one in 
San Antonio to find me a little home, and I 
shipped enough goods, and now I see he is go- 
ing there to die ; to die, away from any friends ; 
to be buried far from his brother and his father. 
And I am to be left alone ! Oh, it is wicked, 
cruel, unjust! How can the Almighty treat 


no 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


me so! — just because he is strong and I am 
weak I” 

Her speech tore forth with hot vehemence, as 
I have seen lava tear out of the side of Mount 
Vesuvius. Here was a fiercely strong, wholly 
rebellious, undisciplined heart, 

I said: “To lose those we love, to be left 
alone, is a great sorrow ; but those whom God 
takes to himself are set above all trouble, and 
the way is not long until we may find them 
again in the bosom of God.’’ 

“It is not that I want, it is him. I cannot 
give him up. To-night, when I lie down by 
him in the berth, I will think how the earth 
will soon hold him, and I cannot touch or see 
him again. Was it for this I gave him life, and 
nursed him at my breast ? God has no right to 
take him away ; he is mine !” 

I wanted to divert the fierce torrent of her 
thoughts: “It is well you have means to help 
him,” I said. 

“Oh! what is money? If he and I were 
working in a ditch, so he was well, I’d be con- 
tent. I thought of money once.” Then she 
burst forth into reminiscences. She had come 
from Ireland at fifteen, and for fifteen years 


TH^O MOTHER HEARTS. 


Ill 


had lived with one family, scrupulously saving 
all that she could. A lover from her own coun- 
try showed equal energy and economy. At last 
they married, went to Minnesota and secured 
six hundred acres of good land, which they 
stocked. All went well with them; railroads 
came their way ; towns rose near them; the farm 
was in splendid order; they had a large, com- 
fortable house and bought a little property in a 
near village, ‘^to live in when the boys took the 
farm.’’ The eldest boy displayed great ability, 
and wished to go to college and become a priest. 
Only a month before he was to leave home, he 
was stricken with Bright’s disease, and in four 
days lay dead. ‘‘The sky was black about me,” 
she said ; “all the world was cold and dead. For 
three long years all my thought was in that 
boy’s grave. I could not smile nor speak; all 
I wanted was him; I moved as if I was in a ter- 
rible dream ; I had no thought for the rest, only 
for him. Well, in three years’ time my hus- 
band came from the field and lay down on the 
bed; it was Bright’s disease again, and in a 
week he was buried by the boy. Then I for- 
got the boy ; it seemed as if my sorrow for him 
was buried deep below my sorrow for my hus- 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


112 

band. My heart called for him day and night. 
He called me ‘Maggie.’ He had seen the old 
county where I was born; he and I had our 
memories of all those years together ; I wanted 
him, only him, and not life, nor money, nor the 
home, nor anything was good without my man. 
I could not care for things as I had; so we 
rented the farm and went to the village house, 
yet still I could see and hear nothing but my 
man in his coffin. The five years had gone, but 
I was still the same, so blind, bound with grief. 
I could not see this boy pining away, hour by 
hour, till the doctor said to me : ‘Woman, wake 
up; you are likely to lose this one, too.’ Oh, 
then I forgot those two graves! I forgot my 
eldest born and my man. I thought only of this 
one dying under my eyes, of Bright’s disease, 
too! I took him wherever they said would be 
good for him. I lavished on food and medicine 
and doctors ; but he gets worse day by day, and 
now, any week he may drop out of my hands, 
that cannot hold him from death. Oh, the pain 
for the others is forgotten! they are gone; I 
can give them up and forget them, if only this 
one could be left me. There is no use to tell 
me about God’s will. I don’t want God’s will ; 


TWO MOTHER HEARTS. 113 

I want to keep my son. Oh, if only this last 
one could be left me. Then I might he recon- 
ciled to the Almighty!” 

As she spoke, she lifted her magnificent great 
dark eyes with such a look of mingled dread 
and defiance as I had never dreamed eyes could 
show. She was as the Niobe in that master- 
piece of sculpture in Florence, as she clasps her 
last child to her bosom, and turns a face of re- 
proach, agony, supplication, hate, dismay, to 
the gods who have destroyed her family. Some 
mother in such anguish as this Praxiteles must 
have studied before he could so write a heart 
in marble ; even to look upon her was a fashion 
of vivisection ! 

''Then 1 might he reconciled to the Al- 
mighty!” I carried that fierce utterance with 
me for days, impotent, awful, pitiful outbreak 
of a heart arrayed against God. 


THE MAN WITH 
A DRIED-APPLE SOUL 


Ga^i^er Lane^ tottering along the sidewalk, 
paused and looked wistfully at a chair in front 
of Hans Beck’s grocery. It was borne in on 
Gaffer’s mind that Hans begrudged his sitting 
in that weather-worn old arm-chair. But Gaf- 
fer’s legs were tired; he was chilly; at home, 
unless it was very cold, they could afford only 
one fire, and there was so much washing and 
cooking going on about that! On this chair 
the sun shone warm and golden, and there were 
all the street interests to keep Gaffer’s atten- 
tion. 

Gaffer sat down. There was a kind of creepy 
feeling along his back when he felt sure that 
Hans Beck’s gray eyes were fixed on him 
through the window. 

Hans came out with a basket of apples. 
“Gaffer Lane,” he said, “s’posin’ you sort them 
apples for me. You don’t seem to be doin’ 
much, an’ you might as well pay for the use 





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THE MAN WITH A DRIED-APPLE SOUL. 115 

of the chair. Put the all-good apples on this 
paper, and the all-bad ones in that box, an’ the 
betwixt-and-between ones in this basket. I 
kin take ’em home for sass.” 

Gaffer bent to the task. His thin shoulders 
ached as he stooped forward, his lean hands 
trembled, for Gaffer’s working-days were past. 

Mrs. Nott went into the shop for pepper, 
soda and ginger. 

“Where’s Ruth now?” asked Hans, anxious 
to be pleasant to a customer. 

“She’s living with Mrs. Balling; a fine place, 
and such a good lady !” 

“I don’t call her a good lady,” said Hans, 
tartly. “I call her proud an’ stuck-up. Why 
don’t she trade with me? It would do me some 
good if she bought her groceries here. But no, 
she sends to the big down-town stores. I call 
that all folly and ambition !” 

“The Ballings live handsomely and enter- 
tain a deal; naturally they want the best, as 
they’re able to pay for it. The big stores keep 
fresher goods of better quality, Mr. Beck. You 
see, you bid for the trade of us poorer folks.” 

“All the same, I call her selfish for not help- 
ing me with her trade,” said Hans. 


ii6 STUDIES IN HEARTS. 

^‘There’s no selfishness about her,’^ retorted 
Mrs. Nott. ‘‘She’s always doing good and 
helping somebody. She’s helped your own kin, 
Mr. Beck. No end to what she has sent to your 
niece, Gretchen Kist!” 

“Let her. I don’t take stock in Gretchen, 
nor in Kist, her husband. Shiftless lot !” 

“Oh, Mr. Beck! People say quite the con- 
trary. They are unfortunate; hard it is for a 
young man to lose his leg 1” 

“All carelessness. Other folks don’t lose 
their legs. I didn’t lose mine. Then if Kist 
can’t get work enough, let Gretchen take hold.” 

“They say she does; but with twins six 
months old, she has poor chance to earn bread.” 

“They needn’t look to me,” said Beck, dog- 
gedly. “Why did they marry, with nothing to 
live on?” 

“I suppose they loved each other and meant 
to work. That’s the way me an’ Nott set up. 
It’s the Lord’s will there should be poor folk 
among us. Don’t he say, ‘The poor have ye 
always with you, and whensoever ye will ye 
may do them good’ ? Mr. Beck, it is a sin not 
to share and give. I’m poor, but I love to give 
all I am able.” 


THE MAN WITH A DRIED-APPLE SOUL. 117 

“I give/’ said Hans. “I give my reg’lar 
share in church — ask the deacons; but I never 
give to idlers. No getting something for noth- 
ing out of me! There; anything else to-day, 
Mrs. Nott? Thank you. Come again.” 

Mrs. Nott went out with her parcels. Gaffer 
Lane had finished with the apples; he looked 
white and tremulous. 

“Come home with me, Gaffer,” said Mrs. 
Nott. “I’ve a fine fire in the Franklin, and you 
can sit by it and take a nap in my stuffed chair. 
We’ll have a cup of tea and some doughnuts for 
lunch. My men folks are off to the wood-lot 
for the day. Come, Gaffer, have a quiet visit.” 

“I dunno as I’m tidy enough to go visiting,” 
said Gaffer, looking eager as a child at the in- 
vitation. 

“Oh, you’re always as neat as a new pin ; and 
if your shoes are damp, you can slip on Nott’s 
scuffs. Here, take my arm and let me help you 
along.” 

When Gaffer Lane was seated in the big, soft 
chair before the fire, had his feet in Jonas Nott’s 
slippers and had eaten a slice of hot apple pie, 
Mrs. Nott sat down to sew. 

“I do say,” she remarked, “that Hans Beck 


ii8 STUDIES IN HEARTS. 

is just eaten up of selfishness ! I reckon he set 
you at sortin’ them apples ?” 

“Yes; he is a kind of a driver,” said Gaffer; 
“he wanted me to pay for using his chair.” 

“Sinful man !” said Mrs. Nott, sharply. 

“There, there! Don’t be too hard, Mrs. 
Nott,” said Gaffer. “I’ve long lived, and ob- 
served many. I don’t size Hans up that way. 
I believe Hans thinks he’s a Christian, but he 
don’t in no way live up to his privileges. He’s 
reg’lar at church, he keeps Sabbath, he gives to 
the collections, he has a blessin’ at table, an’ he’s 
living gen’ rally a way he s’poses to be right and 
pleasin’ to God. But, you see, he has never 
made full use of his opportunities. Beck hasn’t 
patterned after the dear Lord; he’s forgot to 
love an’ to sympathize, an’ his soul has jes’ 
shrunk up small, dry an’ hard. I allow, the 
Lord must have his patience dreadful tried with 
some of his people. The Lord’s so lib’ral an’ 
lovin’, I’m sure he don’t approve of the poor 
showin’ Hans gives his religion. It makes peo- 
ple talk ag’in religion. Mis’ Nott, when we 
don’t show it forth right.” 

Gaffer took from his pocket a small, hard 
thing the size of a hazel nut. “I found it on a 


THE MAN WITH A DRIED-APPLE SOUL. 119 

stem longside o’ one of the best big red apples 
ever I see,” he said, holding the object out for 
inspection. “It minded me of Hans. ’Pears 
his soul is all same as a little, hard, dry apple. 
Lots of folks has dry-apple souls ! You can tell 
this thing started out to be an apple, but it 
don’t have the proper p’ints of an apple. So 
with Hans; there’s things by which you can 
tell he started to be a Christian, but he don’t 
have the proper p’ints of a child of God.” 

“I do say. Gaffer !” cried Mrs. Nott. “I love 
to hear you talk. It’s improvin’. Go on.” 

“That fine big apple. Mis’ Nott, had used its 
privileges an’ become what it ought to be. But 
this little thing, it didn’t use the sun to meller 
it, nor the rain to fill it out to a proper sample 
of an apple. The rain rattled off its tough skin, 
an’ the sun jes’ dried it up. An’ ain’t it a dis- 
graceful picter of an apple !” 

]\lrs. Nott took the specimen for examina- 
tion, looked at it and laid it on the window-sill. 
“I think,” she said, “that the stem has been 
pricked by some kind of a fly, and that has hin- 
dered its growing; the stem hardened up, like.” 

“Jes so. Mis’ Nott, jes’ so. I tell you, there’s 
a fly called Selfishness that pricks its way deep 


120 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


into our souls, an* after that’s took possession, 
it is with us all self and no service, as our 
preacher dealt out last Sunday. From this sting 
of selfishness may the dear Lord deliver us! 
What use on this earth are the dry-apple souls ? 
Why, even pigs can’t eat an apple like yon. Mis’ 
Nott.” 

Now, it happened that Gaffer Lane, comforted 
by the fire and the warm pie, sat musing on 
dry-apple souls until he dropped asleep. At 
night-fall he went home, forgetting the apple. 
Mrs. Nott found it when she dusted, and, not 
wishing to throw away the text of Gaffer’s ser- 
mon, put it in her pocket. There it was when 
she went to Hans Beck’s store for salt and 
soap. She felt it when she searched in her 
pocket for change, and, as they were alone in 
the store, she took the little dry apple and set 
it under Hans Beck’s eyes. Then, kindly and 
faithfully, she preached to Hans Beck Gaffer 
Lane’s sermon about “folk with dry-apple 
souls.” 

Hans heard, flushing, winking hard, twitch- 
ing his mouth and making inarticulate grunt- 
ings ; but he put the dry apple in his pocket. He 
felt it whenever he took out his silver watch. 


THE MAN WITH A DRIED-APPLE SOUL. 121 

and that hard, dry, useless, abortive apple told 
the big watch Gaffer’s sermon, and the watch 
ticked the message into Hans Beck’s ears. Had 
God meant his soul to bring forth fair fruit for 
the glory of God ? And, being bitten of Selfish- 
ness, had it become hard, dry, sapless? Was 
his withered soul a disgrace and not an orna- 
ment to the church of Christ? So the Master 
had come for fruit and found none ! Why cum- 
bered he the ground? 

One day Gretchen Kist was surprised by a 
big basket of groceries from her uncle Hans. 
Gaffer Lane was amazed to have a buffalo robe 
laid over the chair to wrap his shaky old knees 
up, and a box set before him for a stool. Also, 
he was told to make himself at home, and sit 
there in the sun all he pleased. Some way Hans 
Beck was changed ; he lived not for self, but for 
service. 

“God can Work miracles,” said Gaffer Lane. 
“He has made a little, hard, dry-apple soul be- 
come soft, mellow, serviceable.” 


THE WINDOW LADY 


I KNEW her well. She was one of those 
happy natures who are ever unconsciously scat- 
tering brightness about them because of their 
own inner light. Little children and stray dogs 
and cats followed her in the streets, finding 
consolation in being near her. She gave them 
the largess of a smile or a pleasant word. The 
children had their own names for her — ‘‘The 
sunny lady,” “My sweet lady,” “The lady of 
the smile.” Perhaps the dogs and cats had their 
names for her also in their own language. 

“Why do you run after that lady ?” a woman 
asked of a little laddie. 

“Because she always shines on me,” was the 
reply. 

One day, hearing as she walked along the 
pavement the sounds of altercation behind her, 
my friend turned. “What are you little lasses 
disputing about?” she asked. She discovered 
that the cause of strife was, which of the two 


THE WINDOW LADY. 


123 


should have the privilege of running on to open 
a gate through which she was to go. 

One of the names child-given to my friend 
came to have a certain sweet pathos about it. 
She spent many hours among the books in a 
famous library. Standing one day in one of the 
alcoves, reading a reference, she looked 
through the wide window and saw, almost op- 
posite, a child in the window of a tall house 
that towered above the library garden. The 
back of the house overlooked the library, about 
eighty feet away, and the child was in one of 
the upper windows, a golden-haired, fair-faced 
child of four. True to her nature, the lady nod- 
ded and smiled, and the child returned the 
salutation. The lady held up her book to in- 
dicate her occupation; the little maid held up 
her doll. They were now on terms of intimacy. 

Every day the reader spent some time in the 
wide window, and the little child was always 
watching for her. Every new toy was held up 
for the lady to see; the child made a block of 
patchwork, and that, too, was held up for ap- 
probation. The wide window-sill was the 
child’s playhouse ; and as she made up her doll’s 
cradle, or set out the dishes for ^‘play tea,” she 


124 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


was happier because the lady opposite knew 
what she was doing. Her mother was called 
to share her enjoyment of her friend. When 
the lady appeared, the turning of the child’s 
head and an eager nod made it plain that she 
said, ‘‘Here she is again !” 

The child and her mother seemed to live 
alone in those two high rooms. The mother was 
neither too poor nor too busy to make her little 
one small cakes and tiny pies on baking days. 
These sweets were duly held up for the lady to 
see, and when the yellow-haired darling had a 
new frock and apron, she stood on a stool that 
her friend might have a full view. Several 
months of this friendshp passed. 

One spring day an attendant in the library 
respectfully asked a young lady who was study- 
ing there, “Where is your friend who was here 
all winter ? My little girl became very fond of 
her. She watched her from the window of the 
Duane Street house, and now she misses her 
and asks for her every day.” 

“My friend was suddenly called to Europe. 
Tell your little girl that she will see her again. 
She will be back with the roses.” 

“My little girl calls her ‘The Window Lady.' 


THE WINDOW LADY. 125 

All life seemed brighter and more enjoyable to 
her from the sympathy of the Window Lady in 
her little joys/^ 

“She will come again with the roses. Take 
her this pink rose, and tell her when the roses 
bloom in the garden she will see her Window 
Lady smiling across them.’^ 

A month later the attendant stopped again 
at the young student’s desk. He was changed. 
His face was sad ; his voice was broken. 

“Tell the Window Lady,” he said, “that my 
little girl could wait for neither her nor the 
roses. She has gone into the gardens of 
heaven. She had placed on the window-seat 
all her new toys, to be ready for her Window 
Lady. One day, as she was arranging them, 
she looked up into the blue sky, and said, ‘Per- 
haps God is looking at me and smiling, just as 
my Window Lady did — only I cannot see him 
now.’ She was sick but a day or two. Just be- 
fore she went away, she said, ‘I shall look down 
out of God’s windows and smile at you all, as 
my Window Lady smiled at me. Tell her I 
didn’t go very far, we live so high up near the 
sky !’ ” 

Then the attendant in his list slippers stole 


126 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


away with his sad face. He and the mother 
were lonely, for all they knew the little one was 
not very far off, but was in the gardens of God 
and smiling at them from the opal windows of 
heaven. 

She had all her little life lived high up, so 
near the blue! The dust and tumult of earth 
had seethed and rolled far beneath her ; even its 
trees and flowers had been away down below 
her in the enclosed garden. 

The Window Lady came again over the sea, 
and she was told the story of Golden Hair. 
And now, as a choice treasure, she hides it 
among her memories, that same Window Lady. 


The Servant of Sin 




THE SERVANT OF SIN 


There are passages of the Bible which we 
read many times without finding them particu- 
larly forceful, but which by some experience 
of our lives acquire intense meaning. The 
verse, John viii., 34, ‘‘Whosoever committeth 
sin is the servant of sin,’' was to me one of these 
texts. 

It was in Brighton, England. I was reading 
by a window, when my attention was called by 
the wheezing squeak of an accordion, pulled 
at, not played. The day was gloomy, cold, driz- 
zling; the mud in the street was black paste, 
and in that mud before my window stood a 
woman, or the wreck of one. Matted gray hair 
hung about her face and down her back from 
under a dirty, ragged hood; a man’s coat, foul 
and torn, was held about her by one button ; her 
wet skirt was tattered and draggled about the 
ankles of a pair of splay, unmatched, broken 
men’s shoes. The woman’s wrinkled, brown 


128 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


throat, her weather-seamed, unclean hands, her 
lined, hard, fierce, defiant face, all bore the marks 
of neglect and dissipation. I was ready to give 
a small coin merely to be rid of such a spectacle. 
There were some of the street vendors and 
singers with whom I had formed an interesting 
acquaintance — this seemed one of the unhelp- 
able. A man of her own age, as dissolute and 
horrible as herself, stood with a rusty tin lid 
in his shaking hands, ready to receive dona- 
tions. I raised the window and duly contrib- 
uted my threepence, for which I received no 
thanks. 

“Madame,” said my landlady, who came into 
the room to inspect the attendance of the maid 
in my “apartment,” “you really should not do 
that; she is one of the worst women in the 
world.” 

“She looks it,” I replied, “and that in itself 
is a most deplorable destiny. There was no 
doubt a time when she could have been helped ; 
some time when she might have preferred good- 
ness and decency. That must have been a 
frightful fall that dragged her to be such a spec- 
tacle as she is.” 

“There are plenty of vendors and singers 


THE SERVANT OF SIN. 


129 


who are well-meaning, unfortunate people,” 
said my landlady. ‘‘There are some bad 
enough, who never had any chance to be better ; 
but this woman is not one of them. She is a 

H She uttered the name of one of 

Brighton's merchant kings. “She has only to 
speak the word, only to submit to be helped, 
and she could be dressed as well as you are, 
and sit and be waited on in apartments like 
these. She is in that squalid misery because 
she prefers it.” 

“That sounds like some hideous goblin story. 
Prefers that squalor, need, degradation, vile 
companionship ?” 

“None of it is as vile as her soul, which has 
deliberately chosen that lot. As a baby, that 
woman, richly wrapped, was carried along 
these boulevards in the arms of a nurse; as a 
little child, she wore white frocks and patent 
leather shoes, coral beads, and played on the 
sands, with a maid to watch her. As a girl, she 
rode in a carriage, and went to one of the best 
schools for girls in Brighton. She was always 
violent, lawless, disobedient ; whenever she 
could escape from home, she took herself to the 
lowest slums as her natural element. It was 


130 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


not merely that she wanted to drink ; she might 
have taken her drink at home; she wanted her 
gin in the reek of the gin-shops, among the 
noise, profanity and fighting of men and wo- 
men/’ 

“Your story seems beyond belief.” 

“It is every word true. When her father died, 
as he had never been able to reform her, he left 
a sum of money in the hands of her brother, to 
be applied to her help whenever she would al- 
low herself to be kept decent. Hers is no story 
of some sudden fall, no pitiful banishment from 
home ; the home was always open ; hands were 
always held out. It was only that she was the 
slave of sin that she loved vice in all its most 
miserable, cruel manifestations. What doings 
terrify other women to name she delights in. 
She has been carried to the hospital ready to 
die from brutal attacks of that man who is with 
her. Her brother, with tears, has gone to im- 
plore her to come to his home to be saved, and 
she has driven him from her with curses. It 
is not love for the man, for he has been carried 
nearly dead to the hospital, injured fearfully by 
her. The lowest tenement houses evict them, 
to be rid of their fighting. The chief joy of 


THE SERVANT OF SIN. 


131 

that creature’s life is to go, just as you see her, 
to the door of her brother’s magnificent store, 
squeak her accordion, demand alms, march to 
her brother’s private office, call him by his 
Christian name and order him to give her 
money; then, passing through the store, she 

proclaims herself the sister of H . Her 

friends have had her carried to decent lodg- 
ings, made clean, clothed, when she was in a 
stupor, and, recovering her senses, she has gone 
back to the den from which she was rescued.” 

^‘Perhaps the gracious influence of the Gos- 
pel has not been tried,” I ventured. 

‘‘Madame! And the H s so religious; 

of your own church, too! Why, that is the 
very thing they did try. Her nephew was 
surely one of the saints of this age.” 

Yes, I knew it. He was one who in early 
manhood had laid down his life on the foreign 
field, one of England’s most precious offerings 
to God. How was it possible that of the same 
kin could come that saintly life, glowing with 
such Christ-like beauty, and this monster of 
sin-loving? I repeated, “It seems incredible!” 

My landlady was a zealous Methodist, and 
notable in class meeting. She said: “Why, 


132 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


madame, is it any more strange than what hap- 
pens every day ? This has a bold look to it, the 
vice and misery are so very gross; but every 
day there are thousands that turn backs on 
Christ to go with the wicked ; plenty who refuse 
heaven ; plenty that choose badness before 
goodness, vile books instead of the Bible. That 
wretched woman reminds me of the words: 
‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of 
sin.’ I heard a minister say that ‘servant’ is 
all the same as ‘slave;’ and if ever there was a 
slave that poor woman is one. Yielding to her 
evil instincts, they have made a wretched slave 
of her. Oh, isn’t it a hardship and a dreadful 
curse to be given up to one’s own self that way ! 
When I look at her, I think, ‘Perhaps just such 
vile misery is what the power of God has res- 
cued each of us from.’ We think it strange her 
refusing all the respectability and comfort the 

H s could give her; and yet every day we 

see people refusing eternal heaven !” 


Fiddlin’ Jim 




I 4 




‘‘FIDDLIN’ JIM” 


“Still going on with that Sunday-school for 
colored people, Mrs. Dole?” 

“Yes, indeed. I never found work that paid 
better in the good done. I can see the poor 
creatures improving from week to week.” 

Mr. Ross shook his head. “I never put any 
faith in work done in the East End, and now 
that youVe let ‘Fiddlin’ Jim’ come in. I’m sure 
you’ll fail.” 

“Why shouldn’t that poor soul be given a 
chance to hear the Gospel?” 

“Because she don’t deserve it. Half the folks 
in this town have had fits of trying to improve 
Fiddlin’ Jim. She don’t want to be better, and 
she can’t be better. She is the most saucy, lazy, 
untidy, no-account darkey alive.” 

“Perhaps this Sunday-school is the means 
appointed to make her better,” said Mrs. Dole. 

“Don’t flatter yourself. She comes to rout 
you out !” 

“She came in and took her place in my class, 
and has been quiet and attentive. I certainly 


134 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


cannot take the responsibility of denying any 
poor soul the Word of Life/’ 

‘‘You’ll find she is merely waiting to raise a 
rumpus and break up the school.” 

Mrs. Dole went homeward in melanchol}^ 
mood. This work among a long-neglected col- 
ored population was dear to her heart. She 
paused by the kitchen door and said to Sabrina, 
who was making pies : 

“Sabrina, did your church people ever try to 
do anything for those colored folks at the East 
End?” 

“No, Mis’ Dole ; we don’t associate with any 
such trash as that!” said Sabrina, with a toss. 

“Their very misery is an appeal to Christian 
benevolence. Did none of you ever try to im- 
prove Fiddlin’ Jim?” urged Mrs. Dole. 

“Well, Mis’ Dole !” cried the scandalized Sa- 
brina. “I sh’d say not! I wouldn’t be seen 
speakin to her ! Why, as for stealing’ an’ lyin’ 
an’ fightin’, Jim tops all. Lan’ sakes! Spec’ 
me to be goin’ with Fiddlin’ Jim!” Sabrina 
pinched on a top crust, and cut a neat little 
round breathing-hole in the center. “Do tell. 
Mis’ Dole, have you took in that Fiddlin’ Jim 
into yo’ Sunday-school ?” demanded Sabrina. 


TIDDLIN' JIM! 


135 


“She came of her own accord a month ago, 
and has seemed much interested.” 

“Oh, Ian’ sakes. Mis’ Dole! Intrusted! 
She’s only try in’ to git yo’ off yo’ guard laik, 
an’ then she’ll whip out her fiddle an’ start a 
dance, or whoop out into a song, or suthin,’ to 
break yo’ all up — that’s the plumb truth. I’m 
older nor yo’. Mis’ Dole; yo’ take my ’visement 
an’ turn Fiddlin’ Jim out.” 

“What! Refuse help to a poor, dark soul?” 

“Soul? Well, mebbe she has, ef yo’ say so. 
Mis’ Dole, but I nebber see no signs of it. Don’ 
she go there her head lookin’ laik it nebber see 
a bresh, dirty shawl pin’ crooked at her neck, 
dirty frock, an’ no trouble took to sew up the 
tears ?” 

Mrs. Dole’s fallen countenance admitted the 
picture true. 

“I thought so,” said Sabrina, cutting out 
tarts. “She too lazy to keep clean, or to wuk. 
She nebber wuk ’cept to earn her fiddle.” 

“She has learned to read a little.” 

“Jes’ so she could learn silly, no-’count songs, 
to sing when she fiddles.” 

“Where did she get such an absurd name?” 

“Her name rightly was Jane James ; but Jane 


136 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


is a quiet, respectful name, not fitten fo’ huh, 
an’ as she was alius a-settin’* on do’ steps fid- 
dlin’, they call her Fiddlin’ Jim; Jim’s short 
for James, an’ James is a kin’ o’ swell an’ 
propah name, not fitten for her, neither.” 

Burdened with such opinions of her unprom- 
ising pupil, Mrs. Dole went next day to the 
Sunday-school. She had with her some Sun- 
day-school papers, that were eagerly accepted 
by all but Fiddlin’ Jim. 

“Dunno’s I keer for ’em. Mis’ Dole. They’s 
nice ’nuff, an’ true ’nuff, but they ain’ pow’fuL’ 
Fm a mighty bad lot, an’ it takes what’s rale 
pow’ful to get hoi’ o’ me. ’Feared like when I 
hear you read the Bible, the fust day I come 
here; it was the pow’fulest readin’ I ever heard. 
I want a Bible.” 

“Oh, do you? Then I must give you one.” 

“No, don’t. I’d ruther git it fo’ myse’f. I’ll 
keer mo’ fur it if I struggle to git it. Same 
way with my fiddle. I wuked weeks fo’ that, 
an’ then I sot such store by it I tuk it into bed 
with me, fear somebody’ d come steal it or break 
it at night. Say, Mis’ Dole, is a fiddle 
wicked ?” 

“Certainly not.” 


•FIDDLIN' IIM: 


137 


‘‘Lots of 'em says it is.” 

“Any kind of a musical instrument can be 
used for the glory of God and to sound his 
praise — a fiddle as well as an organ. If you 
use your fiddle to play and sing profane or 
wicked songs, then you do wickedly; but the 
fiddle is innocent.” 

“Does you say my fiddle can be used for the 
glory of God? Las' week I sot tryin' to play 
‘Jesus Loves Me,' an' Miss Kite comes along 
an' says I was profanin' holy words.” 

“She was mistaken. Sing and play all the 
hymns you can. God will not scorn to hear 
them. God says he will come into every heart 
that longs for him, and into every home that 
desires him. He will come to you if you ask 
him and make him welcome.” 

“Will he?” said Fiddlin' Jim, with a glad 
flash of her sullen face. 

“Yes. Don't you think if you ask such High 
Company that you and your home should be as 
clean and orderly as possible ?” 

“I nebber kep' nuffin' clean but my fiddle. 
Thet shines,” replied Fiddlin’ Jim. 

“Try and make yourself and your home 
shine, if you mean to ask Jesus there.” 


138 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


After two or three days’ hard work ^‘making 
garden,” Fiddlin’ Jim appeared at the book- 
store and asked for a Bible. 

“There’s one — ^twenty-five cents,” said the 
clerk. 

“Oh, I don’t want no sech skimpy little let- 
ters as them,” said Fiddlin’ Jim. 

The clerk offered another Bible, bound in 
purple cloth and with red edges. “There, that’s 
nice, large print. One dollar.” 

Fiddlin’ Jim examined it carefully. “Yes, I 
kin read that. Here’s ‘and’ an’ ‘thee,’ an’ ‘but’ 
an’ ‘God’ — lots of words I know.” 

She paid the dollar and carried off the book. 
It was put into the case with the cherished 
violin. Then she sat down and surveyed her 
room. An old tub, pail and broom, a box set 
on end for a table, while certain unwashed 
utensils for cooking were tossed inside. Dirty 
windows, with flour sacks pinned across them 
for curtains; a soiled, ragged bed, a few neg- 
lected chairs and dishes, some untidy clothes 
cast in a heap on the floor. The only fairly 
good article was a looking-glass, given her as 
a joke. 

“Well, you are a bad-looking lot!” said Fid- 


TIDDLIN' JIM: 


139 


dlin’ Jim, addressing the room. “I never ex- 
pec’ the Lord Jesus here, shuah !” She went to 
the glass and observed herself critically. “An’ 
you match the place,” she said to her image. 
“Nebber spec’ the Lord Jesus lib in de likes o’ 
you ! The book an’ the fiddle’s all there is heah 
decent ’nuff for him, an’ they looks lonesome. 
It’ll take a lot o’ wuk an o’ aimed money to 
mek this yere place an’ pussun so we darst arsk 
him to please come heah.” 

She rocked back and forth. The old, law- 
less, idle nature struggled against this new 
yearning after better ways, after the Lord of 
Life. 

“It’s got ter be done,” she said, “ ’cause I 
wants him, an’ I has to have him; ’cause I’m 
plumb sick o’ what I am !” Then out came the 
sudden cry, wrung from her by her helpless- 
ness, “Oh, Lord, won’t you help me to stick to 
tryin’ to do better? If yer don’t. I’ll give up, 
shuah!” 

Week after week, between hope and trepida- 
tion, did the faithful teacher watch Fiddlin’ 
Jim. The rough head became tidy; the soiled 
shawl, the torn gown and dirty shoes passed 
away. The great strength of the woman, put 


140 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


to honest work, won wages, which by degrees 
clothed her properly and provided her room 
with the comforts of a home. The busy hands 
of Fiddlin’ Jim whitewashed the room walls 
and painted the wood-work. Her Bible was as 
scrupulously kept as her fiddle; and, used as 
zealously, illuminated her soul. 

“I likes to study up things,” she said. “Las’ 
week I hunted an’ foun’ all ’bout John Baptis’. 
Mighty peart readin’, that. This yere week I 
done foun’ out all ’bout Peter. Peter’s very 
pow’ful readin’; it jes’ suits me. I’m doin’ 
Teeny’s washin, an’ Teeny she’s teachin’ me to 
read some better.” 

“What think. Mis’ Dole?” said one of the 
women six months later. “Nan Lane was took 
very bad sudden — dyin’, yo’ know — an’ no time 
to fetch a preacher ; so some one says, ‘Run call 
Fiddlin Jim, ’cause she’s pious, an’ goes to Sun- 
day-school, an’ kin pray.’ So they calls Fid- 
dlin’ Jim, and Nan cries out : 

“ ‘Oh, I’m dyin’ ! What shall I do?’ 

“Then Fiddlin’ Jim, she says, ‘Oh, honey, the 
dear Lord is able an’ willin’ to sabe, an’ he neb- 
ber casts out any who comes to him. You jes’ 


‘FIDDLIN’ JIM: 


trus’ him. Lay right back on him, an’ trus’ 
him with all yo’ heart !’ 

“Poor Nan! She says, ‘Oh, I don’ know 
how to trus’ !’ 

“Then Jim she says, ‘Honey, you has to arsk 
Jesus to help you trus’ him. He’ll show you 
how to do it. He gib you to will an’ to do of 
his good pleasure — the Bible says it.’ 

“Then Fiddlin’ Jim she kneels down an’ 
prays, an’ she sot by Nan an’ show the Lord 
Jesus to huh, an’ poor Nan she pass away as 
easy as a lamb, trustin’ to Jesus.” 

Then the teacher who had wrought in faith 
and humility in a dark place gave thanks to 
God who had added such jewels to her crown. 


“UNCLE GEORDIE” 


It was a June day and the sun shone, but no 
one in the town of Bender seemed to know it. 
Rather it was every one as if it were “a day 
neither light nor dark;” a day of a subdued, 
silver-lined gloom, where the enclosing haze 
of earthly changes and sorrows might at any 
moment break and lift, and give wide looks 
into heaven ; when groping hands might for one 
instant touch the hands of angels, or “brush 
our mortal weeds against their wings.” There 
was no laughter in Bender, and no tears. Earth 
and heaven had come very close together for a 
brief space, and a citizen of earth had “in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye,” become a 
citizen of glory. This was the “wa-gang o’ 
Uncle Geordie.” 

It was not like many other goings forth from 
earth, when only one family, or neighborhood, 
is concerned; when there is cause for weeping 
because of helpless infancy, or bereaved age 
reft of the strong stay, the loving heart-care. 
Uncle Geordie had gone in reverend age, and 



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VNCLE geordie: 


143 


his own had all passed into the celestial city 
long before him. Uncle Geordie also belonged 
to everybody; every household in Bender felt 
a claim on him, felt a deep gratitude toward 
him, missed him as a part of its own. 

Uncle Geordie was then rich ? A public ben- 
efactor, he ‘‘had built them a synagogue;” oth- 
erwise a town library, a fountain, or an opera 
house ? Oh, no ; Uncle Geordie, looked at from 
an earthly point of view, was poor indeed ; from 
a heavenly point of observation, we might see 
him to be passing rich — in faith, love, hope — in 
many beautiful and eternal things that had deep 
fitness for the land into which he had but now 
stepped. 

For thought of Uncle Geordie the village of 
Bender walked slowly that day, kept their 
blinds half closed and read their Bibles. In the 
home, a simple little cottage, which Uncle 
Geordie had abandoned for the many mansions, 
in the front room, lay a still white image of hu- 
manity, the mystery and dignity of death upon 
it, and covered with a long, white linen sheet. 
Near the house, perched on a fence, a row of lit- 
tle lads sat, like a row of pigeons cooing in the 


sun. 


144 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Bobby Tunstall took from his pocket an an- 
cient jack-knife: 

“I’m going to put it away to ’member him 
by, ’cause if I kep’ it in my pocket I might lose 
it. Las’ Chris’mas he gave it to me ; said he’d 
had it ten years, an’ he was gettin’ too old to 
whittle, so he give it to me ’cause pop hed been 
out o’ work so long, an’ mom sick so long, they 
wasn’t a sign of a chance for me to get a Chris’- 
mas present to home. You bet I liked this 
better’n anythin’ ; I’d wanted a knife the longest 
while ! Uncle Geordie was always a f eelin’ for 
folks, somehow.” 

“This house b’longs to Mis’ Gray now, ’cause 
she took care of Uncle Geordie for ever an’ 
ever so long. Mis’ Gray says she’d much 
ruther have Uncle Geordie ’round than own the 
h6use; said he saw things so clear an’ straight 
he was just like another conscience to her,” said 
Teddy Bayless. 

“He wasn’t one bit afraid to die,” said Billy 
Gray, in a low, solemn tone ; “he told me so his- 
self.” 

“That was ’cause he was so well acquainted 
with God,” said Billy Blake, the deacon’s son. 
“Pop said Uncle Geordie ’bout knew the Bible 


VNCLE geordie: 


145 


by heart, an’ made him think of what it says 
’bout seein’ God face to face, an’ ’bout walkin’ 
with God, an’ ’bout talkin’ with God as a man 
talks with his friend. Guess he’ seen an’ heard a 
lot by this time;” and five pairs of young boy- 
eyes sought the blue dome, and a sacred silence 
fell upon the little chattering tongues as the 
healing shadow of Uncle Geordie’s good life 
passed by. 

When the Civil War broke out Uncle Geor- 
die was past fifty by several years, and, like 
Jacob, *‘he halted upon his thigh.” Unable to 
go to war, he saw almost every able-bodied 
youth and man of the warlike little town of 
Bender go forth to do battle. Scarcely a house 
in the village had left in it men, except the very 
old and feeble, or slender little lads. 

‘‘Good-bye, boys,” said Uncle Geordie, as he 
saw the plucky column depart. “I can’t go to 
the front with you, but I can be rear guard 
and see to those you leave behind.” 

The parson was marching with the rest, and 
he made reply : “It was a rule in Israel that ‘he 
that tarrieth by the stuff is as he that goeth 
forth to battle.’ ” 

The men gone. Uncle Geordie took up the 


146 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


burden of doing duty for twenty-five. Every 
morning he rose early, and, going from house 
to house, he performed such acts of household 
helpfulness as had belonged to absent fathers 
and sons. He mended broken gates, dosed sick 
cows, glazed broken windows, mended fences, 
sawed wood, split kindling, cared for gardens, 
put on stray shingles and nailed fast loose clap- 
boards. He gave advice, and he went errands ; 
he sat up all night with the sick, put up and 
took down stoves. From morning to night, 
and often from night to morning. Uncle Geor- 
die was indefatigable, serving. He lived not 
for himself but for others, and, like his 
Lord, he went about doing good. To the 
limit of his strength, and beyond it, went Uncle 
Geordie, utterly ungrudging. He led the 
prayer meeting, superintended the Sunday- 
school; with the village doctor he ministered 
to the dying, and often his words of prayer 
were the last of the sounds of earth that reached 
their ears. He was ‘‘Uncle Geordie” to every- 
body ; not a village child but counted him blood- 
kin. When Addie Bent’s father was reported 
among the killed. Uncle Geordie took the help- 
less child and her prostrated mother to his own 


VNCLE geordie: 


147 


home. He comforted the last hours of Mrs. 
Bent with his promise to be a father to Addie. 
In his house she grew up, and married Jonas 
Gray, and as a daughter she ministered to Un- 
cle Geordie’s octogenarian years. His sub- 
stance was small, but he gave a portion to them 
that had none, dividing his shelter, iood and 
raiment with the needy. 

When war was over, and strong arms and 
broad shoulders were again ready for work in 
Bender, Uncle Geordie had the habit of helping 
fixed upon him; and surely there were always 
the sick and orphans needing his care. It was 
a familiar word : ‘‘Let us ask Uncle Geordie.’’ 

If lads were wayward, idle or neglectful, it 
was Uncle Geordie who saw the springing evil, 
and he, in his quaint, kindly way, led the err- 
ing one right. The parson said if boys never 
went wrong in Bender it was because they could 
not, with such a kindly, tender, wise old mon- 
itor ever alert for them. 

So was Uncle Geordie a part of all the house- 
hold, or even individual, life of the village: 
friend, brother, father, to all about him ; his life 
blood flowing in ready sympathy with every 
life that touched upon his own, constantly ready 


148 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


to excuse, to pardon, to make peace and pur- 
sue it. 

Uncle Geordie was a living presentation of 
the power of littles. He never did what men 
call a great thing in his life, but he did the in- 
numerable little things upon which so much of 
life hinges. The spirit of ‘‘she hath done what 
she could’' was ever about him; he was a living 
exemplification of the “gathering up of frag- 
ments, that nothing be lost.” Fragments of 
time, of simple knowledge, of little kindnesses, 
of gentle speech ; these were all Uncle Geordie’ s 
capital for pursuing a busy, useful life; but, 
all being consecrated, God was greatly served 
by him. God in his fellows, for as David, Un- 
cle Geordie’s thought was: “My goodness ex- 
tendeth not to thee, but to the upright upon 
earth, in whom is all my delight.” 

“It was Uncle Geordie got me to learn a 
trade.” “It was Uncle Geordie encouraged me 
to think I could fit myself for a teacher.” “I 
never could have brought up my little father- 
less boys without Uncle Geordie’s help and ad- 
vice.” “Our whole village has had a sample 
of walking with God.” He was a living epistle 
of the grace of God, known and read of all men. 


UNCLE geordie: 


149 


His clean, active temperament, kindly, hope- 
ful living, brought him far into old age, hale, 
cheery, active. Nearly ninety years ran his rec- 
ord, and it was a record growing brighter and 
brighter, until one June noon he entered upon 
his heritage of perfect day. 

Every one in Bender wanted to have Uncle 
Geordie’s body lie in God’s acre near those 
whom he had helped. So they made his grave 
in the center of the little burial ground, and 
placed the long-buried wife and children be- 
side him. 

No one wanted to place Uncle Geordie’s cof- 
fin on a hearse; they wanted, as they say in 
Scotland, ‘‘to carry him.” Therefore, they laid 
him on a bier, and the men and boys, his neigh- 
bors, divided themselves into groups of six and 
took turns in bearing the bier on their shoul- 
ders. Through the June stillness and sweet- 
ness — a mid-week Sabbath of sacred sorrow 
and love — singing the Psalms of Degrees, 
“devout men carried him to his burial and 
made great lamentation over him.” 


«ME’N FRILLER” 


I SAT in my window looking out upon Rus- 
sell Square, London. ‘‘Come in,” I said, hear- 
ing a knock. 

“If you please, ma’am, Fm Friller.” 

Then I turned. She was a big woman, her 
once fresh-colored English face furrowed by 
cares, with hollows telling of meager meals 
that had failed to satisfy ; a pair of brown eyes 
were indomitably cheery, matching a voice 
which half a century had not robbed of its cou- 
rageous ring. 

“About the buttonholes,” said Friller. 

“Oh! can you do them on fine white goods, 
merino and broadcloth?” 

“ ’Deed, ma’am, I’ve done ’em for the tailor 
on Huston Street this ten year. ’Twas the bak- 
er’s wife, where you left the card, told me. She 
sez, ‘Friller, go get them buttonholes, an’ she 
bein’ a furriner’ — ax par ding, ma’am — ‘won’t 
think o’ jewin’ you to a farden.’ ” 


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w friller: 


‘‘I give a penny apiece all around, and find 
silk and thread/' 

The eyes of Friller shone with joy. “Fll 
suit you, ma’am ; you’ll see.” 

She looked so honest that I thought of no 
guarantee for the goods. I simply asked where 
she lived. “I don’t want the articles taken to 
an infected house.” 

She named a place, a clean, quiet court. 
‘^Top story, ma’am; ’way up high, where 
there’s air and sun, though it’s a terrible climb 
for a heavy body no more nimble on the legs 
than me. You’d never b’lieve once I climbed 
haystacks, clear to the top, would you, ma’am ? 
Room looks right down on that little Spurgeon 
chapel. Hear the singin’ reg’lar, an’ the pray- 
in’ an’ preachin’, if the man’s voice is kind o’ 
forcible. Me ’n Friler leans over the winder- 
seat an’ gets our preachin’, as we says, jokin’. 
Friller never smokes while he’s list’nin’ — ’pears 
to him onrespeckful like. Why don’t we go 
to church? Land love you, ma’am, me’n Friller 
haven’t had clothes fitten this ten year ! Now, 
I look at you, ma’am, b’lieve I saw you cornin’ 
out of that chapel. Says Friller: ‘Here’s a 
lady ’mong ’em. Not kerridge folks — she’s 


152 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


walkin’ ; ’pears to b’lieve “the rich an’ the poor 
meet together, an’ the Lord is the maker of 
’em all,” as the Book puts it;’ so I looked, an’ 
it was you I see cornin’ careful down the steps, 
holdin’ old Mis’ Gridley’s hand, an’ led her up 
to the corner.” 

“Yes; the old blind lady. She reached out 
her hand so confidingly to my arm, and said, 
“Please put me on Hunter Street with my face 
west.” 

“Yes’m, that’s her way. Lizzie has that 
many babies she can’t go, an’ Bill’s on the rail- 
road ; but church is Mis’ Gridley’s joy. So Liz- 
zie sets her with her face east, an’ she goes to 
the corner. Then she turns sharp an’ goes on, 
an’ asks some one to turn her into Chapel Court. 
I’ll bring them button-holes to-morrer night an’ 
get the others. I’ve a dozen to do for the tailor 
yet, at fo’pence a dozen.” 

“He told me he didn’t know of any button- 
hole maker,” I said. 

“Well, ain’t he wicked ! Won’t pay a livin’ 
rate hisself, nor yet don’t want me to get it 
from any one else. Don’t the Book say that 
the poor that oppresseth the poor is like a 
sweeping rain that leaveth no food?” 


^ME w friller: 


153 


“I’m glad you speak as a Christian.” 

“Oh, I’m not so very good,” said Mrs. 
Friller, modestly. “Still, when Friller’ s out 
of work, an’ I’m in, he likes to read the Book 
’loud. Friller’s way of readin’ is to find all the 
places ’bout the poor. Folks do say that poor 
folks always chooses Rev’lations — that’s when 
they’re poor, an’ also goin’ to die. Me ’n Friller 
are poor enough, but we don’t look to die no 
ways soon, so we don’t care so much ’bout Rev- 
’lations.” 

Mistress Friller presently became a familiar 
figure at our lodgings. She would come in 
puffing, declaring : “Oh, ain’t your stairs easy, 
compared! Light and wide, an’ soft carpet. 
It’s a pleasure to come up ’em, as I tells Friller. 
Do hope you’ve more buttonholes. I ain’t tellin’ 
tailor Totts. I work for him just the same — 
have to — but if he thinks he’s keepin’ me out of 
a job, let him.” 

“Do you know of anyone who can run a 
sewing machine?” 

“Don’t know anybody can do it better’n I 
can. I make ^em hum. Shirt season I work 
on the Row, an’ am classed No. i. I’ve got a 
machine” — with pride. “Not so very good. 


154 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Got her second-hand. Friller keeps her in or- 
der. He can run her, too. Can't make her hum ; 
takes me to do that. Friller was a ker ridge 
builder; served 'prenticeship. Worked fifteen 
years for same boss till the boss broke." 

‘‘Could he not get another place?" 

“Bless you, no, ma’am. What broke his boss 
broke the rest of ’em, till there’s ten men for 
one job. Germany did it, ma’am. Germany’s 
alius doin’ it. Folks took to gettin’ kerridges 
made in Germany, half as cheap ag’in, an’ small 
cost bringin’ ’em over. So all the trade fell 
through. Many’s the night me an’ Friller, 
sharp set of hunger and pressed ’bout the rent, 
has laid awake wishin’ as Germany was sunk 
in the sea. Germany’s an awful nuisance. 
Can’t see what the Lord made it for. Eng- 
land’s enough — and America” — with curtesy 
to me. “What’s the use of French, an’ /tal- 
yans, an’ that riff-raff? Friller ’s walked the 
soles off his boots — an’ feet too, lookin’ for 
jobs, an’ fit to drop of hunger an’ discourage- 
ment." 

“There is a deal of street work being done 
now, repaving and so on; can he not get on 
that?" I ventured. 


‘ME ’N friller: 


155 


‘^Oh, ma’am!” cried Friller in rebuke and 
grief — “Friller! Why, thafs navvy work! 
Friller’ s a mechanic; he couldn’t come down to 
navvy work.” 

“I merely thought any work would be better 
than no bread.” 

“No, indeed, ma’am. You’re so innocent, 
bein’ a furriner — ax your parding — a mechanic 
like Friller can't turn navvy, not if he starves 
for it. Oh, no!” 

My girls were going to Paris for the Salon, 
and Mrs. Friller was engaged to come and 
“make the machine hum.” The machine was 
in the parlor, where my meals were served, and 
Mrs. Friller was brought in by the maid just 
as I sat down alone to my lunch. She discreetly 
placed herself at the machine, turning her broad 
back toward the table with elaborate care. 

“Mrs. Friller,” I said, “have something to 
eat?” 

“Oh, no, thank you, ma’am; I’ve had din- 
ner. 

I was sure there was a falter in the cheery 
voice. I put a chop, a potato, a cup of cocoa 
and a slice of bread and butter on a plate and 
carried it to the machine : “Eat that before you 


156 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


sew a stitch. YouVe had dinner? I know it 
was a stale roll.” 

“And a drink of water,” amended Friller. 

I returned to the table and ate my lunch. 
Friller by the machine, her back still turned, 
ate, striving to restrain her eager craving. 
Somewhere between the table and the machine 
rose potent that invisible line of social demarca- 
tion which made this apartness, the habit of 
both our lives, seem right. Yet a whimsical 
notion came to me that angel on-lookers might 
note it as childishly absurd, and I wondered 
how far into eternity these earthly tricks and 
manners would project themselves. 

The meal heartened Friller to renewed lo- 
quacity. 

“Friller will be glad to hear of my treat. 
Mostly we don’t one have what t’other don’t 
get. Sometimes when he’s real down, an old 
mate or master may set him up in a stew or a 
pepper pot. Friller served ’prentice to Mr. 
Savery. Day he was free, Mr. Savery says, 
‘Here’s a good man through his time to-day, 
an’, Friller, you may work on here, if so you 
choose.’ Then he gave Friller a suit o’ clothes 
an’ twenty pound, an’ they fired off the anvil 


’N friller: 


157 


three times. Sez Mr. Savery, ^Half holiday it 
is, and the treat is Friller’s. Seein’ you don’t 
drink, Friller, I advise you to take your mates 
on the boat to Greenwich an’ set ’em up supper.’ 
He did, an’ it cost him two pound. That twen- 
ty pound was the most money ever Friller han- 
dled to once in his life. If we’re very down, 
Friller tells me of them times, an’ I tell him of 
my times.” 

“Tell me, too, Mrs. Friller.” 

“Born down by Broadstairs, went to the 
church school ani learned needlework. Lady 
Praed took me to be trained, an’ I was second 
maid for her an’ Miss Is’bel for fifteen years, 
till I was thirty. Then Friller come down from 
Mr. Savery to do up kerridges, an’ was there 
three months. We got to talkin’ over the back 
garden wall evenings. Lady Praed sez, ‘Ann, 
what’s this folly with Friller? Marriage is all 
nonsense,’ she sez. 

“ T know it, ma’am,’ I sez, ‘an’ I wouldn’t 
think of such a thing for no man but Friller.’ 
She laughed out. ‘Your mind’s made up, Ann, 
I see.’ 

“ ‘I’m terrible ’fraid ’tis, ma’am, it bein’ 
Friller,’ I sez. She said she’d see me through. 


158 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


SO she give me a sash an’ a white frock, an’ we 
was married in the village church, Miss Maud 
bein’ bridesmaid. Lady Praed she give a sup- 
per on the lawn to all the servants, an’ me an’ 
Friller an’ my boxes went away in the carrier’s 
cart to the railroad. I had two big boxes of 
dresses, cloaks an’ such. Lady Praed had give 
me during fifteen years, of hers an’ the young 
lady’s. She was just, an’ divided ’em equal 
’tween me an’ the first maid. They weren’t 
things for my wear, but I kep’ ’em. Bein’ 
thrifty, when we got to London we hired two 
rooms on Birdcage Walk, an’ in the front one 
I opened a second-hand clothes trade, stocked 
with them things, and bought more of ladies’ 
maids an’ trades people’s folks. I was so handy 
with my needle I made things look fine, and in- 
vented them over. I got a fairish trade with 
concert hall singers and pantomime supes at 
Christmas. Friller worked at the shop, an’ 
me ’n Friller had plans of getting well-to-do an 
having a shop up Hackney way. Then it 
rained cats an’ dogs of misfortunes on us. 
Friller went up country for a two months’ job, 
and while he was gone the baby came. I went 
right down with typhoid, doctor said along of 


^ME w friller: 


159 


a sewer that had been busted two year under 
our rooms, makin’ ’em all dampish an’ smelly. 
The woman I got to nuss me stole all my stock, 
and ran the business clean ont. Friller came 
back, down in the mouth ’cause the boss was 
broke an’ all the men on the street. When we’d 
paid our bills, we had nothin’ left but the baby, 
a few sticks of furniture an’ three pound. No, 
we ain’t never had a day’s good luck since.” 

‘‘And your son ?” 

“He’s a good, steady one. Never had any 
other. Couldn’t ’prentice him, so he does day’s 
work in a warehouse. He’s engaged to a nice 
girl; twenty he is; but they don’t look to get 
married, ’cause they haven’t nothing to live on. 
She comes every Sat’day an’ scrubs my floor 
an’ landin’ an’ my share of the stairs, ’cause 
I’m so heavy I can’t stoop easy. She tries to 
be darter-like. Sundays, if it’s fair, she an’ 
James sits on the park benches an’ does their 
courtin’, an’ goes to church evenin’ s — if they 
have decent clothes. If tain’t fair weather 
they sits an’ does their courtin’ in our room; 
me ’n Friller turns our backs an’ pretends we 
don’t notice. We pretend a deal at our place, 
livin’ three in a room. I’ve wanted a screen — 


i6o 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


Lady Praed, she give me notions. Now I’m 
workin’ for you, I’m goin’ to buy sticks an’ 
cloth, an’ Friller he’ll make the screen.” 

There was a pathos in the picture of the 
young lovers who never expected to marry : the 
girl trying to show her love to her sweetheart 
by doing hard tasks for his mother. Friller 
informed me that ‘‘Ellen’s fambly lived five in 
a room, an’ Ellen’s mother bein’ weakly, James 
carried up coal and water for her, same as if 
she was his folks.” Mother and Ellen lived by 
box-making. “Sometimes they got bare enough 
to live on; sometimes not. If not, Ellen never 
let on.” 

On Saturday night Mrs. Friller took home a 
basket of provisions for a Sabbath dinner for 
her household, including Ellen and the mother. 

“We’ll all be filled for once,” remarked 
Friller as I handed her the basket. 

“Are all your lives so dull and hard?” I 
queried one day. 

“Oh, no ! Once in a way we haves the best 
fun ! Last Whitsun Monday ever was we had 
times! James had saved enough to take him 
an’ Ellen to Hampton Court. Night before, 
sez Friller, ‘Ann, wish we could have a bit of 


^ME W FRILLER: 


i6i 


treat, too. I’ve a sixpence saved.’ ‘So have 
I,’ I sez to Friller; ‘les’ go to ’Ampstead ’Eath.’ 
I had a good skirt, but not a waist nor a coat 
with whole sleeves in it. So that night I took 
a clear wore-out pair of trousers of Friller’ s, 
ripped ’em an’ washed ’em, an’ put ’em to dry. 
In the mornin’ I rose early an’ made a pair o’ 
sleeves for my coat out of them trousers. 
Friller het an iron an’ pressed the seams an’ 
coat good. Then we got a pen’orth of herrings, 
a penny for two jam tarts — day-old ones — a 
pen’orth of cheese, four stale buns for a penny. 
Then you can't go to ’Ampstead ’Eath Whit- 
sun Monday ’less you haves a little squirt to 
play jokes on folks with; so we each had one 
for a penny, an’ that used up Friller’ s sixpence. 
We started early, an’ walked up to where the 
ride to the ’Eath cost a penny. There was 
young folks on the car, an’ they joked an’ 
squirted at me ’n Friller like we was young too. 
We had such good times ! 

“At the ’Eath we each paid a penny for a cup 
o’ tea, an’ that give us a table to eat at under 
a bower, so we ate our lunch. A man come 
by, an’ seein’ us larkin’ so jolly, he sat by our 
table an’ shared a big currant loaf with us. 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


162 

Late at night, we rode back as far as the penny 
took us each, an’ we walked the rest o’ the way. 
We was tired, but we had had fun to last us a 
year. 

‘‘I’m contrivin’ an’ contrivin’ to get enough 
saved up to go next Whit Monday, me ’n Frill- 
er, an’ James an’ Ellen, an’ Ellen’s mother. I 
told Friller it was mighty good of God to send 
us poor folks such good times an’ enjoyment, 
an’ we ought not to be back’ard, but catch at 
our opportunities.” 

Mistress Friller and her little party did get 
to Hampstead Heath that Whit Monday, and I 
was given to understand that the occasion was 
a magnificent success. 


In English 
Alms-Houses 




IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES 


In English literature, whether essay, history 
or novel, we find frequent mention of English 
alms-houses, and my curiosity had been awak- 
ened concerning a form of charity very differ- 
ent from anything in my own country. 

The alms-house is an institution unlike the 
English work-house or poor-house, or our 
American “county house’' or “county farm.” 
The English poor regard the work-house or 
poor-house with terror and aversion, but the 
alms-house is looked to as a happy refuge for 
the aged poor, if one is so fortunate as to get 
entrance therein. 

Sometimes, from the window of a railway 
carriage, I had seen on some choice hillside, or 
near an ancient church, or at the edge of some 
town, a row of stone or brick cottages, where 
an arched gateway or the inscription over the 
door of a chapel stated that these were St. 
Mary’s, or St. Ann’s, or Saint somebody else’s 


i 64 studies in HEARTS. 

alms-houses; or they were named St. Albans, 
or Bede’s, or Swithin’s Charities. 

Now and then these houses shone new in 
fresh brick, paint and mortar; again, the thick 
stone walls, curled tiles and tiny diamond win- 
dows bore evidence to their antiquity. Always 
there was about them an air of solidity, com- 
fort and quiet decency that suggested a benev- 
olence of long standing, in good order, and 
with ample maintenance. At last I gratified 
my desire to visit one of these institutions and 
learn something of the daily life of the inmates. 

London is a congeries of towns come to- 
gether in their natural growth. Towns and 
villages that once lay several miles from true 
London, now called “The City,” have by their 
own growth and the extension of the city itself 
at last coalesced with each other and old Lon- 
don. That which was once field or orchard is 
now streets of houses and factories roaring 
with traffic. 

Places that were in old times farm steadings 
or lonely ecclesiastical properties have been ab- 
sorbed in the expanding metropolis. All these 
former towns and villages had their one, two 
or more churches — to us of the land of new 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 


165 


things seeming old in their two, three or five 
hundred years. Cathedrals, convents, monas- 
teries, abbeys and their dependencies passed at 
the Reformation into the hands of the State. 
While some buildings and endowments were 
entirely secularized, more became the property 
of the English Church, and with their increas- 
ing endowments have been maintained to the 
present. 

During the last several hundred years also, 
pious and pitiful souls have made bequests of 
endowments for charities, and of these a favor- 
ite has been the alms-house, placed near by and 
under the care of a church, or, not infrequently, 
put in the keeping of some town corporation. 

These alms-houses are for old men, old wo- 
men, or, infrequently, for aged couples. The 
age, character and religion of those eligible to 
the benefits of the foundation are carefully set 
forth in the endowment deed, with all the bene- 
fits that are to accrue to them. 

To be an inmate of an alms-house is not a 
badge of dishonor ; it is often a mark of merit, 
a certificate of moral character and of good and 
regular standing in the church. Naturally the 
alms-houses chiefly belong to the wealthy and 


i66 


STUDIES IN HEARTS, 


historic Church of England, simply because for 
many hundred years individuals able to make 
such endowments were of her members. The 
younger churches, and those less wealthy, who 
were not able during some centuries past to 
make such provision for their needy aged mem- 
bers, have some of them established new alms- 
houses after the old fashion, but most of them 
have instead built ‘‘Old Ladies’ Homes,” “Old 
Men’s Homes,” “Convalescents’ Homes,” 
“Chronic Invalids’ Homes,” “Disabled Gov- 
ernesses’ Homes,” and so on ; none of them, to 
my mind, so beautiful, beneficent, dignified and 
truly Christian as the old English alms-house. 

On the outskirts of London, near a great 
stone church, which with its properties had 
once been the realm of a rural dean, and earlier 
of some Roman abbot, I stood one May morn- 
ing before a row of twenty alms-houses, all as 
alike as peas in a pod. The buildings were of 
brick, dark with age. The doorways and win- 
dow-casings were of stone, the windows small- 
paned, the roofs high-pitched and red-tiled. 
About ten feet of dooryard lay between the 
houses and the low fence along the sidewalk. 
These yards are undivided, except by the little 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 


167 


gravel walks, neatly kept, which, from the small 
front gates, led to the narrow doorways. 
Each front door was near the side of the house 
and opened into the front room, which had one 
window with a broad seat. Thus, each house 
had a door and a window in its front room, and 
these doors and windows alternated along the 
entire row. The little front yards, ten feet by 
thirteen in size, were kept according to the taste 
of the several possessors. Some were in grass, 
with some central shrub or evergreen; some 
were laid out entirely as flower-beds; some 
were divided geometrically by close-trimmed 
box, the spaces being filled with gravel. One 
was a bed of evergreen periwinkle, and on that 
May morning was gay with sky-blue salvers 
of bloom. At one of the doors stood a kind- 
faced old lady, in a dark calico gown and a 
white ruffled cap. 

“I would like to come into your house and 
hear all about it,'’ I said. 

‘‘Come in, ma'am; most welcome," was the 
prompt reply. “Deary me, I do believe you’re 
an American, and I never spoke to one before ! 
Won’t I be proud, though! And every old 
lady in the houses will come in to call and hear 


i68 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


about it, except Aunt Peggy, and she being bed- 
rid, ril go tell her.” 

The room into which she invited me was 
about 13x13 feet. It had a grate with a hob 
on one side, a square of carpet on the floor, a 
table with a red cover, several chairs with tur- 
key-red cushions, a stand with a work-basket, 
a book or two, and a pot of geranium. On the 
walls were various photographs and small pic- 
tures; there was a patchwork foot-stool, and 
at the window was a muslin curtain carefully 
tied back. There was an air of homely comfort 
in the place. 

The dame soon exhausted her questions 
about America — its size, wealth, climate, re- 
ligion and distance. After that it was easy to 
set her talking about the houses, and her dis- 
course flowed in a steady stream. I merely 
asked, ‘‘What is the age of admission to these 
houses ?” and then the flood-gates were opened. 
It was a luxury to find some one who did not 
know all about alms-houses ! 

“Sixty-three is the age, ma’am, neither more 
nor less, I was going to say; but then you can 
be older, as much as happens, but no younger. 
Seeing sixty-three is the earliest, you’ll hard- 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 


169 


ly believe it, though I tell you, we’ve one 
old lady. Aunt Peggy, has been here thirty- 
three years. Ninety-six if she’s a day; but 
there’s her birth and christ’ning on the parish 
register. Yes, to get in there’s the sixty-three, 
and you must be born in this parish, and have a 
good character life long, and be a member of 
the church — parish church — and reg’lar in your 
duties. You gets your name entered on the 
book for admission, and generally there’s sev- 
eral names waitin’, and when there is a vacancy 
the vestrymen looks over the list and appoints 
according to their judgment. 

‘‘Sometimes it’s age carries it, or longest 
waitin’, or greatest need — being quite unable 
to do for yourself and quite without helpers. 
Nobody can get in who has means of support, 
or relatives able to do for ’em properly. How 
is the vacancies made? Mostly by dying. 
Folks dies, and then some one can get their 
place. Likely several is waiting for my place, 
but I’m not going to die yet. Yes, I have heard 
of vacancies being made other ways. In my 
time, one old lady whose son was enlisted had 
luck, for he was promoted up for gallantry un- 
til he got second lieutenant; then he wrote to 


170 


STUDIES, IN HEARTS. 


have his mother go and live in nice lodgings, 
an’ be kep’ like a lady. We’ve been to see her. 
She likes us to come. Of course, she’s proud 
to be done for like that, but she says it 
ain’t so cosey and sociable as it was here. 

“Another old lady had a son went to Aus- 
tralia and got rich, and he sent home and had 
her go out to live with him. She is alive yet. 
Fifty years ago an old lady got a fortune left 
her, and she went out. She did not live long, 
but she left orders for all the old ladies in the 
houses to come to the funeral, a new black bon- 
net and gown being give them, and each got 
five shillings and a mourning ring. About that 
time one old lady’s son-in-law got rich in trade, 
by accident, and she was took out by him ; but 
she always turned up her nose at the folks here 
and wouldn’t look at them. Still, they mostly 
dies here. 

“What conditions are we under? Why, we 
has to go to church reg’lar, all days when 
church is open, if we’re well. Of course, we 
has to know our catechism, and be able to read 
the service. Our time is our own, and we use 
our money just as we like. We are bound to 
be orderly, keep clean, quiet houses and not to 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 171 

quarrel with our neighbors. Sometimes there 
is an ill-tempered one, but as none of the rest 
will uptake any quarrels, why, all goes easy. 

“What do we get ? Why, we gets the house 
and all that’s in it. Then we get tickets for 
coals enough for two fires, as in yon grate, and 
four loaves of bread a week. If we don’t eat 
that much bread, our tickets is good for buns 
or muffins or what we choose. We gets three 
shillings money each week, and on Christmas 
we gets a new black woollen frock, a flannel 
petticoat, a pair of shoes, yarn to knit our stock- 
ings, and some flannel for underclothes. One 
Christmas we got a shawl, one a bonnet, and 
one a cape, and so it goes round. When we get 
the new woollen frock, we take the last one for 
second best, and the third one back for working 
in, and so on. Whit Monday we gets two caps, 
a cotton gown, a pair of low shoes, three aprons 
and some cotton cloth; so you see we’re well 
clothed. Some that are very easy on their 
clothes has clothes to sell or give away. If we 
earn any money by sewing or knitting, we can 
keep it for ourselves, but we’re not allowed to go 
outside to do day’s work. We can go visiting 
all we like ; but if we go for over three days we 


172 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


must let the manager of the houses know where 
we are. We do our own washing if we are 
able; if we are not, one of the others will do it, 
and we pay money or food, or trade work. 
Most of us uses the room upstairs for sleeping. 
If we’re too old to go up and down, we sleep 
in this room.” 

She showed me the neat little bedroom, with 
chest and pegs for clothes, a wash-stand, bed 
and chairs — a comfortable place. “When it is 
cold, we can have a fire above if we save our coal 
right ; when we need a fire above, we don’t keep 
one in the kitchen. Most of us only use kitchen 
fire the day we wash. Then we boil soup and 
potatoes ; you see, we can make tea, toast bacon 
or muffins, boil eggs and potatoes, here on this 
fire. In summer we use only a little fire in the 
kitchen. Then we get only half as many coal 
tickets ; but most of us have coal saved up from 
summer, and we trade it, or keep it for extra 
in winter.” 

The tiny kitchen was very clean; it had a 
table, two chairs, a closet for tin and earthen 
ware. The grate was lower and larger than 
that in the front room, and had conveniences 
for roasting and boiling. “Now, ma’am, you 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 


173 


must see our gardens ; every house has its gar- 
den.” She led me from the back door, and 
there, divided by little wooden walks, lay twen- 
ty gardens, thirteen feet wide and eighteen 
deep. Each had in one corner a tiny tool- 
house, where a broom, pail, hoe, rake and wash- 
tub were sheltered. The gardens were now, in 
May, all planted; lettuce, radishes and onions 
were growing ; each had a few heads of cabbage 
newly set out; the tool-houses were utilized to 
train bean vines over; there were some pota- 
toes, turnips and carrots also, and my old lady 
told me that the gardens were all well cared for 
by their respective owners, and helped out the 
living marvellously. ^‘Of course. Aunt Peggy 
can’t tend hers, but Jane Ann does it. Jane 
Ann’s her ’doption.” 

I was consumed with curiosity to hear about 
Jane Ann, and my hostess, having shown me 
certain plants of sage and thyme, the produce 
of which she traded to the grocer for tea, took 
me into the house again and held forth about 
“adoptions.” “You see, as long as we conduct 
well we are as free of what we have as if we 
had earned it or ’herited it. We are not pau- 
pers, and are not meddled with. Most of us 


174 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


helps out some of our famblies by taking.a child 
to bring up. I’ve got a granddaughter. She’s 
nine, and she’s at the parish school just now. 
You see, we have bed and fire and shelter for 
’em, and we gets clothes enough to be able to 
make over for ’em, and we can feed ’em if we 
manage close. The church ladies are kind, too, 
giving them clothes to do over, and we gets 
nice Christmas presents, tea, sugar, a ham, sau- 
sage, such things, and some of us earn a little. 
The young ladies of the church are mighty 
good to us Christmas, and they bring us hand- 
kerchiefs and pots of flowers, wool, tea and 
many nice little things. Be pleased to look into 
this closet and see the neat dishes and teapot 
and spoons I have, all given to me by folks. 

“We old ladies love to have a tea drinking 
with a few neighbors. We save on our bread; 
tickets and get some crumpets or buns, and we 
have a little merry-making, as lively as crick- 
ets. Well, I’ve my granddaughter, and most 
of them has a niece, or a grandchild, or maybe 
some poor child taken up in the Lord’s name. 
Aunt Peggy has had three; none of them kin, 
for she’s a lone spinster. First one was ten 
when she came, and stayed fifteen years. She 


IN ENGLISH ALMS-HOUSES. 


175 


went to parish school and to sewing school, 
learned a trade, married a soldier, went to In- 
dia, and her man is a sergeant. She writes to 
Aunt Peggy every year, and sends her a pound 
every birthday. Second girl Aunt Peggy took 
was ten, and she stayed ten years. Mighty 
good, pretty girl. She married a baker over at 
Hackney. Every pleasant Sunday they come 
to see Aunt Peggy, and bring her the beautiful- 
lest buns or jam tarts you ever see. After she 
was gone. Aunt Peggy took Jane Ann. Jane 
Ann wasn’t but eight, but the smartest creetur ! 
She has been with Aunt Peggy eight years. 
She nurses her, and takes care of the garden 
and house. Oh, Jane Ann’s a treasure! Aunt 
Peggy trained ’em well, and when Aunt 
Peggy goes, the rector’s wife is going to take 
Jane Ann for nursery maid. When I look at 
Aunt Peggy and them three ’doptions, I think 
of the tex’, ‘More are the children of the deso- 
late than of the married wife, saith the Lord.’ 
And again, ‘Her children arise up, and call her 
blessed.’ 

“Yes, I’ve got children. My daughter has 
a big fambly, and her husband is weakly. They 
couldn’t do for me, but I help them. I 


176 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


keep their Kate, and I sew a good bit for the 
children, and I often help ’em out one way an’ 
another. Mothers like to do that, and its Scrip- 
ter, too. I’ve got a son ; he is steady, but some- 
times he is not in work. His wife isn’t strong, 
and they have five children. They get on, and 
they come to see me Sunday afternoon and 
bring tea and things for supper, and we are all 
happy together. I sew for them, and I’ve gone 
and tended them when they’re sick, so I don’t 
feel useless, but as if I did my share yet in the 
world. You mostly can find ways to help and 
be useful, if you look out for them, can’t you ? 

“You see, these alms-houses they was found- 
ed by God’s people for God’s people. You don’t 
feel no way humiliated by taking it ; it comes so 
out of God’s hand. You ain’t tyrannized over; 
you are free human beings and can live out your 
own life here, don’t you see? Now the union, 
oh, that’s dreadful! all kind of roughness and 
restraint — downright abuse sometimes. But 
here, why, you’ve your own roof and your own 
hearth, and your own kin free to come and go ; 
then when the church ladies come and talk with 
you, why, you feel a real part of God’s big 
fambly.” 


A Mother’s Lesson 











A MOTHER’S LESSON 


Mrs. Temple sat under a tree on her lawn. 
She had her sewing in hand and sat there to 
watch Eve, her youngest child, who was at 
play. Mrs. Temple’s mind was neither with 
Eve nor the sewing; it was set upon a subject 
which occupied nearly all her day-time hours, 
“held her eyes waking so troubled that she 
could not sleep,” filled her with anguished 
cares, and was fast becoming a morbid and 
dominant sentiment. It was a sentiment abun- 
dantly right in itself; nothing less than an in- 
tense desire for the conversion of her three eld- 
er children — young people of thirteen, sixteen 
and seventeen years old. They were amiable, 
moral, obedient, outwardly excellent; but their 
mother had seen no tokens of an especial work 
of grace in their hearts, and she felt that they 
stood in slippery places amid the temptations of 
youth and of life. She found them unarmed, 
and more and more as she considered their con- 
dition, she became alarmed and desperately 


178 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


anxious. She talked with her children; they 
seemed not to understand her state of mind, 
and were merely troubled for her. She prayed, 
she took her anguished longings to her God ; in 
prayer, some light would come; hope, confi- 
dence would beam upon her from the Word 
and the mercy seat, and then presently the bur- 
den rolled heavily back upon her soul. What 
had she done or left undone ? What evil hered- 
ity or lax example had beset her beloved ? How 
long, oh. Lord, how long? She felt as if she 
belonged to the souls crying under the altar; 
her health was being undermined ; she realized 
that, but she did not realize the other truth, that 
her mental health was also imperilled. As 
she sat there, her thoughts treading their cease- 
less, painful round. Eve, her other child, her 
baby child of about three, was trotting up and 
down the lawn, talking, laughing and singing 
to an armful of dolls. Her mother noticed her 
once, and the swift thought came: “Happy 
heart, she is untroubled about her children r 
Eve dropped one doll, a soldier, from the 
four or five which her chubby arms held to her 
bosom. She stooped to gather it up, but a 
poodle, seeing the bright thing fall, considered 


A MOTHER^S LESSON. 


179 


it a challenge to play, and came leaping and 
barking over the grass, springing up to seize 
the dolls. Eve shouted, “Go’ way !” stamped her 
feet and pushed at him. The antic poodle still 
leaped, snapping his white teeth, caught a doll’s 
foot and loosed it again. Eve began to run 
toward her mother ; the dog kept pace with her. 
She reached her mother and flung all the dolls 
into her lap. Then she turned, content, leaned 
back against her mother’s knees, rested her 
head on them, looked up into the canopy of 
leaves and the blue sky, and hummed a little 
song. 

“Are you afraid of the dog?” asked her 
mother. 

“No; Fm heref^ 

“Are you afraid that he’ll get your dollies?” 

“No. I put ’em in ’oor lap.” 

“There poodle is; he wants them.” 

“But he tan’t det ’em ; you has ’em.” 

“Are they my dollies?” 

“Yes. We’s all ’oors. I’se ’oors; so’s my 
dollies. Loves me, loves zem, don’t ’00?” 

Utterly without care for herself or her dolls, 
the laughing child leaned back and sang, ignor- 
ing the barking, jumping dog she had lately 


i8o 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


feared. Presently she raised her head and de- 
livered some advice : 

“Better go off, Dick. We’s all safe. Nos- 
sing here for ’oo. Mamma cares for we.'' 

Then a sudden flood of light from the Book 
illumined Mrs. Temple's mind: “They are 
mine.” “I will save thy children.” “As the 
soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is 
mine.” “And they shall be mine, saith the Lord 
of Hosts, in the day that I make up my jewels.” 
“He hath blessed thy children within thee.” 
“Thy children shall be taught of the Lord, 
and great shall be the peace of thy children.” 
“He hath remembered his covenant forever.” 
“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more shall 
your Father which is in heaven give good 
things to them that ask him !” “The promise 
is to you, and to your children.” “I have 
made a covenant with my chosen.” 

Mrs. Temple looked at Eve; how happy and 
restful was the child, because she trusted. She 
put her treasures in strong keeping and left 
them there. She rested upon the faithfulness 
of love. Once more a little child taught a great 
lesson. 


Uncle Zeke 












UNCLE ZEKE 

Waiting lately in a station for the train on 
a “branch” road, I remarked an elderly negro 
enter carrying a paper bag. His clothing was 
clean, coarse and warm; his face intelligent, 
kindly, cheery ; his figure alert and strong, feel- 
ing sixty years no burden. He went up to a 
group of young colored girls and offered to 
share the contents of his bag, remarking, “Wal, 
I was so pow’ful hungry I jes’ hed to go git 
some crackers.” 

The girls refused the crackers, evidently 
from pride, as the station was full of people. 
The old man nonchalantly went on eating, say- 
ing, “Wal, sistahs, ef yo’s too proud to eat 
what the Lawd sen’ yo’, yo’ll tu’n to skiletons 
fo’ long, sho’ly.” 

As he stood talking to the girls, I noticed that 
almost all his remarks were followed by ap- 
proving laughter ; he seemed to be an acknowl- 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


182 

edged wit among his people, while a smile now 
and then stole over the faces of the waiting 
“white folks” as some of his quaintly humor- 
ous speeches reached them. 

Our train had not been long in motion before 
it came to a standstill, and a brakeman passed 
through with the usual remark that there was a 
car derailed and we must needs wait for an 
hour or two. He then stirred up the fires, and 
left us to endure the customary delay in our 
own fashion. We had one ordinary car, where 
all the women were seated; next behind this, 
half of a baggage car was fitted up as a men’s 
compartment, and there all the men passengers 
had resorted. The brakeman inadvertently left 
the door between the two open, and as there 
happened to be no smoking, no one closed it. 
The harmonious monotone of the old negro’s 
voice, coming distinctly to me as I sat not far 
from the door, indicated that he was doing 
much of the talking, and frequent bursts of low 
laughter from his fellows told that they were 
well pleased with his speeches. 

“Fine piece of country, this,” said a stranger. 

“Wasn’t that big house ’way over there the 
old Chamberlin place?” asked one. 


UNCLE ZEKE. 183 

“Yes, sah, it was,” spoke up the negro. “I 
know ev’ry inch of the hill like a book.” 

“Weren’t you one of the old Chamberlin ne- 
groes, Uncle Zeke?” 

“I was that. All that prop’ty come to the 
Chamberlins ’long of marryin’ Miss Kitty Paul. 
Miss Kitty had all ol’ Major Paul’s prop’ty, an’ 
she brought Marse Chamberlin nine hundred 
acres of Ian’ an’ sixty negroes. I was bo’n on 
de place, ’bout a year after Miss Kitty kem dar. 
What’s dat yo’ askin’? How I like it? W’y, 
when I got big ’nuff to hev a ’pinion, I liked 
livin’ berry well. I didn’t hev nothin’ to ’plain 
of. What wuk did I do? W’y, when I was 
pretty small I was sot to takin’ keer ob de 
chillun — sometimes de white ones, sometimes 
de black ones. Didn’t make no diff’unce to 
me, s’ long as dey was chillun, though mebby I 
did like tekkin’ care o’ de white ones bes’, 
’cause in deir white frocks an’ bloom ob rib- 
bons dey looked mos’ like flowers. I alius did 
lub chillun. Mebbe it was cause I was alius 
tekkin keer of um ; an’ mebby I was sot to tek 
keer ’cause I was nacherly so fond of ’em. 
Cyan’t say which it was. ’Nuther thing I took 
to was readin’. W’en I was rockin’ cradle or 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


184 

watchin' chillun I was alius a-tryin’ to read; 
an’ Miss Kitty she see it, an’ she hed me larn 
to read. She set me at a primer fust, an’ then 
at the Bible. I hed a New Testyment, an’ then 
the hull Bible. It was ’bout the on’y readin’ 
book I hed, an’ I ’low is was a pow’ful good 
one, ev’ry way. Miss Kitty said so, an’ so did 
I. Sundays Miss Kitty hed a Sunday-school 
fo’ all us black chillun, an’ bimeby, after the 
Sunday-school, she’d say to me, ‘Go, Zeke, you 
take all dem chillun out yander by the big trees 
an’ read the Bible to dem, so they won’t be 
shoutin’ roun’ so ’dicklis for Sunday.’ Miss 
Kitty’s chillun come, too, sometimes, an’ I 
read an’ they read. ’Pears like them was ter- 
rible pleasant times, with the sun slippin’ down 
thro’ the branches, an’ the new leaves jes’ 
buddin’ out, er the ol’ leaves all failin’ round 
us laik as a few rainbows hed went to pieces 
overhead. Sho ! them was good times !” 

“And how did you like the emancipation 
proclamation and getting free. Uncle Zeke?” 

“Lan’, sah! w’y, I was clear lifted off my 
feet! Nebber was so happy any day ’fore dat 
— nebber bin so happy any day sence! Seemed 
laik w’en I got up dat mornin’ the sky mus’ be 


UNCLE ZEKE. 


185 


rainin’ gold an’ dimon’s. Seemed laik de air 
smell like t’ousand c’lone bottles, an’ laik all de 
birds God ebber made got to singin’ dat day, 
an’ sing d’ar up into hebben! Seemed to me 
laik nothin’ n ebber be common laik again. But 
next mawnin’, my! things was goin’ ’long in 
the same ole way, on’y I felt kinder lost an’ 
lonesome laik, same as if some piece of me was 
gone somewheres.” 

“You had to turn in and wrestle to pick up 
a livin’ for yourself. Nobody else was ’sponsi- 
ble for you any longer. Uncle Zeke,” suggested 
a man of his audience. 

“Oh, well, now,” bristled up Uncle Zeke, 
“we uns of the Chamberlin people wasn’t 
throwed out on de worl’ unpervided. Our folks 
w’a’nt like that. No, sah! The Chamberlins 
was white folks, sho’ ’nuff. They give ev’ry 
one somethin’, ’cordin’ to his need, or meb- 
by ’cordin’ to his servin’. The fambly hed city 
prop’ty, too, an’ they meant to move to the city 
to lib. They kep’ a farm or so for rentin’, an’ 
some Ian’ they sold, an’ some they give to us. 
Some got their cabin, some a cow, or some 
hogs, or a boss an’ cyart. Somethin’ to start 
makin’ a livin’ on. I got four as good acres of 


i86 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


groun’ over here by C as they is in this 

kentry, an’ I sez so.” 

“What did you do then, Uncle Zeke?” 

“Mandy an’ me was merried ’fo’ that. We 
had a cabin on our Ian’. Mandy, she did clean- 
in’ an’ washin’, an’ made gyardin, an’ I raised 
co’n an’ taters. Fust thing I did was to set off 
a piece of my Ian’ for a church for my people. 
I c’lected some money fo’ the buildin’, an’ I 
aimed some, an’ I wukked on it myse’f, an’ 
byme-by we bed a weather-tight church. I’d 
taken some, fo’ den, to preachin’, an’ I 
preached ; an’ what time I hed to spare I raised 
my co’n an’ taters from my Ian’.” 

“That’s where you foolished yourself,” some 
one said bluntly. “Better kept your land for 
corn; you’d got more return. There’s no money 
in these religious doings.” 

“Well, sail,” said the voice of old Uncle 
Zeke, deliberately, “I s’pose yo’ think yo’ 
knows what yo’se talkin’ ’bout, but I’ll tell you 
I’d be willin’, ef I hed it^, to give you the ve’y 
bes’ hundred acres in dis yere State, an’ keep all 
chu’ch’s an’ religious doin’ s out o’ yo’ county, 
an’ in sho’t time yo’ Ian’ wouldn’t be wuth ten 
cents an acre. No, sahT 


UNCLE ZEKE. 


187 


“You’re quite right about that, Uncle Zeke,” 
said a pleasant voice emphatically. “Tell us 
how you get on with your church.” 

“W’y, sir, f’um fair to middlin’, er there- 
’bouts. Col’d people ain’ so ve’y thick ’roun’ 
in the kentry, and they’s churches fo’ them in 
town. Likewise, I’m jes’ a unlarned man. I 
kin read, an’ s’pound the Scripter ’cordin’ to 
my lights, but I’m no great shakes fo’ a 
preacher. W’en my old Mistis heard what I 
was doin’, she sent for me an’ give me ’vise- 
ment an’ some simple-like books I could under- 
stan’, an’ she hed me learn the Catychism, an’ 
that was a hard nut fo’ my teeth, but pow’ful 
nourishin’ to my ’sperience; an’ once or twict 
a year I goes an’ has a talk with Miss Kitty. I 
has reg’lar preachin’ some mo’ an’ some less, 
an’ the members ’haves themselves righteously; 
but it’s ’mong the chillun I has the most ’cess. 
I kin sing; that was one reason I hed ’em to 
mind w’en I was a little shaver. I loves ’em; 
I has hopes fo’ ’em, an’ I’se gone ’bout ’stablish- 
in’ Sunday-schools, an’ mekkin’ their folkses 
send ’em to day schools an’ fetch ’em up de- 
cent; an’ I has had good ’cess ’mong the chil- 
lun. The Lord nebber gibe me any fo’ my own, 


i88 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


but Tve helped a heap ob ’em to grow up Chris- 
tian laik. Why, I can’t bear to hear a chile 
cry, or see it ’glected. It was readin’ how 
tender laik the Lord was to chillun fust drawed 
me to him w’en I was little. He took them in 
his arms; he blessed ’em; he set ’em in the 
midst; he watched their playin’ in the street. 
The chillun took to him, which proves he was 
kind an’ quiet an’ ’couragin’ laik, fo’ chillun 
don’t take to no rampagious people. Yes, that’s 
what fust drawed me dost to my Lord.” 

There was a little space of profound silence 
as old Zeke made this simple, earnest confes- 
sion of his Master. The gracious Galilean had 
been suddenly set before the little group of men, 
some of whom had not found him in all their 
thoughts. 

“I’ve bin to see Miss Kitty jes’ now,” said 
Zeke, who could not remain long silent. “She’s 
eighty, an’ as peart an’ smilin’ as ever ; but she’s 
sufferin’ onmerciful with rheum’tism. I sez 
when I come away, ‘Well, Mistis, I hopes yo’ 
patience won’t break down laik Job’s did.’ ” 

“And how did Job’s break down. Uncle 
Zeke?” asked the pleasant voice. 


UNCLE ZEKE. 


189 


‘‘Yo’s a preacher, ain’t yo’ ?” said Zeke. ‘‘I 
thought so. Ain’t that a Bible in yo’ pocket?” 

‘‘A New Testament.” 

^‘Oh, then it ain’t got the book o’ Job in it. 
I’m pow’ful fond o’ the book o’ Job. Now, I 
venture to say they ain’ a whole Bible in this 
car.” 

‘^Yes, there is,” said somebody, ‘hn my va- 
lise.” 

“I got the Psalms h’yar,” said Zeke. “But 
my whole Bible is too bulky fo’ me to kerry 
roun’. I has big print, on count ob my eyes. 
Well, now, concernin’ Job, he held out pretty 
well, but his patience give down, an’ he got fur- 
der under than mos’ men. I don’t consider 
that ere a person on this train ebber got so fur 
down in their ’sperience as to curse their day — 
an’ mo’n that, to go ’way back furder than the 
day they was bo’n an’ do some mo’ cursin’, no, 
sah.” 

Here I, listening in the next car, could not 
repress a smile as I thought that, except Uncle 
Zeke, probably every grown person on the train 
had been heartily “as low down in their ’sper- 
ience as Job” more times than one. Also, I 
thought of the old man’s staunch, cheery, pa- 


190 


STUDIES IN HEARTS. 


tient spirit, who in a long life of poverty and 
hard work had never gone so low down as to 
“curse his day/' 

“But the New Testament approves Job for 
what ?” asked the man who owned a Bible. 

“ Tears to me ’cause tho’ his patience done 
wore out with his losin’ all, ’specially his chil- 
lun, an’ havin’ sickness, an’ his friends bein’ 
so onsensible. Job held fast his faith in God an’ 
would not charge God foolishly. He stuck to 
it, God had the rights of it. Job say, ‘Shall I 
get good an’ not evil?’ Job didn’t go to dic- 
tatin’ to God what to send him. No more we 
oughtn’t to, for de Lord’s kin’ an’ wise, an’ he 
deals with us fo’ our soul’s good, an’ byme-by 
we’ll see the rights of it.” 

The train started. The door swung to. An 
hour later, when we reached our station, the 
men in their car were still discussing religion. 
That one plain, humble old Christian had 
interested all the others in a talk about God and 
his dealings ; the tide of vain or evil conversa- 
tion had been stemmed, and simply and easily 
the thoughts of all those travellers had been set 
heavenward. 


THE END. 


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